Chomp!

Tully Rohrer

April 8^th, 2007

A lot of effort and dreaming came to fruition yesterday as our staff took a 30+ mile boat trip to dive and snorkel on Santa Barbara Island. SBI is part of the Channel Islands National Park, and though we work on a Channel Island, none of us had visited any of the other 7 before. The island is home to a sea lion rookery, an elephant seal rookery, and some amazing dive spots. We dove and snorkeled an urchin barren - a place where the sea urchins have made the bottom almost completely devoid of algae. It was pretty incredible - bat stars, ochre stars, sea hares and thousands of urchins populated the rocks as dozens of sea lions followed us around. Much like our Seal Rock trip, we had a positively extraordinary experience with the sea lions. This particular female was doing her best intimidation technique, which is terrifying if it’s the first time you’ve seen it. It is, after all, a 300+ pound animal with an impressive cutlery set flying at you at 25 miles an hour. But for many of us, it just made for a wonderful but challenging photographic subject. This angry face belies how friendly and curious they are - I was actually kissed on the forehead by one curious female (an event that happened about 1 second after this photo was taken). I have much more clear photos than these two, but they are by far the most memorable for me. All in all, a mind-bogglingly awesome day.

Song of the Day: Vorcza - Congoman
A wonderful jazz trio from Vermont…

great photo, reminds me of the face Victor makes when he’s airborne after losing his grip on a boulder. Nice life you lead Tully!

derek j — April 8^th, 2007