ocean – skelly10

SS Palo Alto

I took some photos today, but didn’t feel like uploading them. Instead I’m posting one I took yesterday on a trip to my hometown Santa Cruz. This is a concrete boat that everyone calls “the cement ship” but its real name is the SS Palo Alto. It has been sitting on the ocean floor since before my time. When I was a kid we could walk out onto the ship, but now the end of the pier is fenced off and the only way to access it is from the water.

The ship was once a floating entertainment center, but these days it is mostly inhabited by sea lions, pelicans and cormorants.

More Palo Alto photos: http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=14614085@N03&q=palo%20alto

Surfin’ Bird

A surf scoter riding the swells

Beach Day

I took a day trip out to the coast on “Black Friday” because competitive shopping isn’t my thing. This big red umbrella was the first object to catch my eye as I walked out onto the beach.

Surfin’ Birds

I grew up on the beach, and I can’t say I ever saw a mother duck take her ducklings out into the surf until now. After multiple attempts, and repeatedly getting washed back into shore, the duck family finally made it past the breakers and headed out toward open sea.

Foggy Morning

I took this photo from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk a couple of hours before leaving town. It was a foggy morning, so the colors are a bit muted in this photo. The pier in the distance is the Municipal Wharf, home to many shops and restaurants… and lots of sea lions.

Dive!

One of my favorite birds is the California Brown Pelican. Most of the pelicans I saw last week were showing their breeding plumage like this one diving after a fish near the sunken concrete ship, the USS Palo Alto (enlarge image to see more detail). Not even a second after I took this photo, the bird was completely under water with only a splash marking the spot where it had entered.

The California Brown is the smallest of the pelicans, but its wingspan is still an impressive 7 feet across. I love how prehistoric they look, like small pterodactyls.