Went for a casual stroll on the Venice Pier today and saw a fisherman catch a lobster! He carefully grabbed it with a cloth and held it up for a second while I hurriedly snapped a close-up. Who knew that lobsters lived in Los Angeles! After a quick web search, I'm guessing it was a California spiny lobster.
In other news, yesterday's gray whale count was ~6-7 whales. I saw 2 whales fluke (one was a nearly perfect fluke!), but mostly I just saw lots of blows and backs. And as a bonus, I also had the coolest bottlenose dolphin sighting to date. For no apparent reason, 3 dolphins simultaneously rocketed vertically out of the water, really high, as if they were trying to touch the sky. I mean, they jumped way out of the water, incredibly high! Very cool.
(My second best bottlenose dolphin sighting was just last week at the local beach where I saw a pod of dolphin playing in the surf. Two dolphins let a wave carry them toward the beach, so I saw a wave break with two perfect dolphin silhouettes coming straight toward me. And another dolphin flipped upside down and displayed his tail high in the air.)
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Redondo Beach
The whale-watching was slow on a recent visit to Palos Verdes, so I left early and decided to check out Redondo Beach on my way home. King Harbor is the home of the Redondo Beach Pier, which is a grand, semi-circular pier that has many stores, restaurants, and even an arcade with skee-ball! (I also discovered skee-ball at the famous Santa Monica Pier, so I've been busily honing my long-dormant but not-forgotten skee-ball skills. :)
I really like the Redondo Beach Pier because it feels more down-to-earth than many of the other LA beach spots (i.e., not as touristy or "upscale"). Lots of seemingly local, blue-collar folks, families with kids, etc. On the lower level, I discovered a store (gotta love their sign!) that sells a staggering variety of live seafood items. The store had row after row of salt water tanks filled with all sorts of odd creatures that (apparently) people buy for food. They had a zillion kinds of oysters and clams, as well as many other types of unusual shellfish and mollusks, some of which I had no idea that people ate! (Well, people who aren't stranded on a desert island...)
Pictures are here.
I really like the Redondo Beach Pier because it feels more down-to-earth than many of the other LA beach spots (i.e., not as touristy or "upscale"). Lots of seemingly local, blue-collar folks, families with kids, etc. On the lower level, I discovered a store (gotta love their sign!) that sells a staggering variety of live seafood items. The store had row after row of salt water tanks filled with all sorts of odd creatures that (apparently) people buy for food. They had a zillion kinds of oysters and clams, as well as many other types of unusual shellfish and mollusks, some of which I had no idea that people ate! (Well, people who aren't stranded on a desert island...)
Pictures are here.
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