Trifecta: Aquarium, Tidepools, Whale

In my continuing quest to explore every inch of the Southern California coastline, I visited the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro. The aquarium was surprisingly good for a smallish local aquarium, with interesting creatures such as gigantic fuzzy seastars, nearly foot-long Pacific seahorses, and a (preserved) Football Fish, which is hands down the weirdest fish I have ever seen! And I learned another whale-related factoid: toothed whales have one blowhole (think dolphin), while baleen whales have two (like nostrils).

The aquarium is next to Cabrillo Beach and the busy Port of Los Angeles, and yet literally around the corner is Point Fermin State Marine Park, which is a 1/2-mile long area of protected tidepools. This place was amazing - a huge expanse of large rocks and raised parcels of land where you can stand while waves wash up around you and leave pools of water in their wake. There were green sea anemones and sea snails everywhere. I also spotted a few sea urchins, which were much bigger than the ones in Malibu, and an unidentified large orange mollusk that was on its back and struggling to right itself. On the rocks, I collected two new (empty) shells for my rapidly expanding Sabbatical Seashell Collection, including a perfect Kellet's whelk!

On the way home, I stopped at (where else?) Palos Verdes to spend the last few hours of daylight looking for whales. At ~6pm, the official whale observers started to pack their bags, lamenting the fact that no whales had passed by since morning. Just then, I thought I saw a blow way in the distance. I figured I was hallucinating, so kept quiet. Then I saw it again. Hmmm. Nah, can't be. Then I saw it again, and this time I saw a black body come out of the water (way in the distance). I alerted the whale observers, who gratefully confirmed that it was indeed a whale! We watched it for another ~20 minutes. They couldn't identify the species definitively, but they classified it in their official records as a "probable humpback" because of the tall blow and the fact that the whale repeatedly rose out of the water (humpbacks are known for this). I was pretty jazzed that I spotted the whale on my own, and that I most likely saw my first CA humpback whale! Like, totally radical, for sure.