Lobster

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.)