We’re north of Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico.
First evening sunset.
All photos: PKR
The place we’re staying is directly on a small beach. Well, ‘small’ is probably the wrong word.
It doesn’t have a poetic name, it doesn’t have majestic cliffs, it doesn’t have any fancy restaurants or hotels or activities.
It’s just a regular, small, coastal beach on the Pacific Ocean. My favorite.
Small but filled with the sky. 
Pre-dawn on the summit of Haleakala, Maui.
All photos: PK Read
What is it about watching the sun come up and watching the sun go down?
After all, it’s just a way of watching the planet turn in its usual way, day after day. 
At least for me, watching a sunrise, and watching a sunset, never gets old.
Each one the fundamentally the same, each one unique.
On our last day in Maui, we made the early trek up to the summit of Haleakala.
We left our hotel 3 a.m., arriving at the top of the mountain around 5 a.m., and then waited patiently in the blistering cold as the stars in the clear skies above gave way with excruciating slowness to the bruised purples and reds of pre-dawn. 
As ever more people arrived, we wondered whether the entire undertaking was really worth it.
The long drive over from the western shore, the frigid temperatures, the biting wind that blew away all memory of the coast below, hidden beneath a layer of coastal clouds as if in another world, a dream world of beaches and balmy breezes.
And then, the clouds were limned with orange and gold, the sun broke through, a collective sigh arose from the crowd, quickly followed by the chirps and clicks of a hundred cameras.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it did.
Daybreak, again, always new. And then, the drive back down the mountain, with stops to look at the blasted crater, the tumbles of volcanic rock, the carpets of vegetation that reclaim the land, over and over.
The day was bookended by the sunset, always predictable and never the same.
The Earth turns, the sun disappears behind the horizon, same procedure as yesterday and tomorrow, and I never tire of it.
Sunset off the coast of Wailea, Maui.
And don’t even get me started on moon watching…
We were walking on Malibu beach yesterday as the tide was going out.
It left behind a long tale of the previous few hours, written in seaweed and flotsam.
I didn’t count how many different types of seaweed left their notes on the sand, but from the number of red lobster shells in the receding water line, I’d say local birds, seals and otters have been feasting. And if there were no lobster claws to be seen, that’s because the California spiny lobster (Panulirus interruptus) doesn’t have any in the first place.
The high tide of our own past few hours was marked by an evening spent on a warm terrace with a good friend, and the Auchentoshan Triple Wood he pulled out to share with us.
As the name says, this Lowland whisky is matured in three different kinds of wood: Pedro Ximenez Sherry casks, bourbon casks and Oloroso sherry.
It has a combustibly sweet aroma, with a taste that echoes dark chocolate, applesauce, toffee and rum.
It was a delight, as was the day and the company.
One who knows how to read what’s skrit in the seaweed.
Seaweed collection circa 1850
Source: Collector’s Weekly
The Victorians liked collections of all kinds, but those of objects of nature were among the most popular. The bit of the glamour and glory of the great era of exploration could be had in gathering one’s own seashells, or taxidermied animals, or skeletons, or in a version previously unknown to me, seaweed.
Seaweed collections apparently became popular with Victorian ladies around the same time as scrapbooking.
Three pressed seaweed specimens were likely collected near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, by Mary A. Robinson, circa 1885
Source: Collector’s Weekly
In Fukishima today, work begins on the extraction of over 1500 nuclear fuel rods from the destroyed nuclear power plant there, two-and-a-half years after the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the area. The rods have been sitting in storage pools of water – they’ll be removed by crane and robot, and transferred to a more reliable storage facility.
And while the Wikipedia page on ‘Radiation effects from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster‘ cheerfully explains that health and environmental risks from leaked radiation really aren’t all that dire (the page is flagged at the top with a note questioning the neutrality of its content), reports of spills and ongoing leaks don’t inspire much confidence.
And so, 150 years after the samples shown here were collected and pressed for posterity, gathering seaweed along the rim the Pacific Ocean takes on a less picturesque significance, namely that of testing for radiation exposure.
Two identification diagrams from David Landsborough’s “A Popular History of British Seaweeds,” which was first published in 1849.
Source: Collector’s Weekly
A giant ‘bait ball’ of anchovy, with two humpback whales approaching on the lower right.
Photo: Liz Vernand via GrindTV
Massive anchovy swarms off the coast of California have kept marine mammals and their observers busy for the past couple of months. It’s not so much that there are more anchovy than usual, it’s that there are more anchovy gathered in one place.
According to this article, anchovy movement can be due to a number of factors – plentiful plankton, mild temperatures – and this year, the anchovy stars aligned over Monterey Bay. Their presence, telegraphed far and wide via whale song, has set off a feeding frenzy of seals, whales, dolphins, and the press.
Northern anchovy
Photo: Monterey Bay Aquarium
Anchovies and other small fish are known as ‘bait fish’ or ‘forage fish’, and form a key element in the marine food chain for mammals and the larger fish that humans prefer to see on their dinner plates. Some have recommended that humans switch away from the larger fish, which are being hunted by vast fishing fleets, to these smaller forage fish for human consumption.
Currently, we fish bait fish for use as feed to the other animals we prefer to eat – pigs, chickens, salmon. The ratio of forage fish feed to salmon, however, is around 5:1. Not very efficient. But the smaller fish, which tend to be oily, just aren’t popular for human consumption.
Anyway, the whales do exactly what human fishermen when they come across a bounty like this – they keep fishing until they’re full, or the fish are gone.
Here’s a very cool short clip, created by Robert Hodgin for the Auckland Museum, of how a bait ball works (in this case, sardines).
