As the fall break is upon CSUF, I took the family on a drive up the central coast to get some fresh and cooler air than we have had in Fullerton. We headed north to Morro Bay after work yesterday and spent today between Morro Bay, Big Sur, and Monterey Bay. It was gray and rainy, but a nice change of pace from the long lasting east winds and high pressure over the Southland. It feels great to get some fresh cool air, some rain, and some open road. We saw one sea otter near Cambria, then saw a large group of elephant seals at a haul out near Hearst Castle. I have included a picture of a large male here. We then spent the afternoon at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It has been some time, but in graduate school I did a few projects that focused on yellowfin tunas. While my wife was in vet school, we did a project sampling juvenile yellowfin tuna dockside in Louisiana for mercury levels. I also spent a few days trying to track yellowfin tunas around oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. We successfully tracked one fish for about an hour or so in 2004. Those tracking data were included in Dr. Greg Skomal's dissertation work at Boston University. The aquarium has several yellowfin tuna in their outer bay exhibit. That was very cool to see.
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