Ralph Pace Photography

Happy Valentines Day Yall! Hope you have a wonderful day and if you have a chance get to watch the Virtual Whale Tales today, https://www.whaletales.org/. Image taken under NMFS permit # 19225 with Whale Trust

After what seems to be an eternity of massive swell and poor weather we finally had a wonderful weekend of ocean goodness. Vis was high and exotic ocean creatures was plentiful. Plenty of gelatinous friends filled the shallows and the lots were packed with beautiful faces of friends I haven’t seen in far too long. Even if the distance was plentiful and the time was short, the words and ocean time was what was needed. Happy to say I finally found a few sea angels (Cliopsis kr...ohnii), which I had never seen before. A wonderful, pelagic sea slug that actively swims around hunting for Corolla spectabilis (I posted an image of while a few posts back). Thanks Momma Ocean I needed you. Ralph Pace Photography

The sea walnut (Hormiphora californiensis) is a simple fella (or chica, they are hermaphrodites. ) Built with only 12 genes, composed of 99% water, less than an inch long and live only 4-6 months. For such a simple and short life, the gooseberry is a rather extraordinary predator. While they can’t produce light, they have eight rows of comb plates consisting of thousands of macrocilia that it can manipulate to produces iridescent light. In classic ambush predator style, they ...are selective predators, and simply cast two long tentacles behind their body and drift in the current in search of their favorite food, copepods. Rather than having nematocysts (stinging cells) like jelly fish, they have colloblasts, the equivalent to gorilla glue that they use to catch prey. And, they are super active. Thier insatiable appetite for copepods is an important part of the food web. Without them copepod populations would boom, eating all of the phytoplankton, which in turn would crash fish stocks, mollusk populations, baleen whales, sharks. Well maybe a little exaggerated but non the less, this short lived minimalist is not only beautiful, but quite important. Ralph Pace Photography

Passing time with whales is always a treat but sharing the ocean with blue whales is a special kind of cool. I had a fun three day run with dozens upon dozens of these incredible giants without anyone around. Sometimes they were feeding and sometimes they were in groups socializing. Sometimes they were relatively mellow and much of the time not. one time one even breached next to the boat. What an unbelievable experience and absolute gift to see the ocean bend and waves created from the largest animal to ever roam earth as she left one medium to briefly visit another. Looking forward to the next weather window. Ralph Pace Photography

I knew it was only a matter of time before we saw the COVID single use effects on the ocean. I’m actually surprised it took this long with the amount of masks and gloves you see laying around. But the rains here seemed to have brought some of them below. COVID no doubt has given many marine mammal species a break with less boat traffic but found some sea lions playing with a drifting N-95 mask today. Ralph Pace Photography

Happy Friday! The last few days have been pretty wild and the life has been incredible in the the Bay. A few crazy stories but for now here is a wonderful sea butterfly (Corolla spectabilis). The Spectacular corolla is a species of swimming snail, a pelagic pteropod, that uses her wonderful wings to flutter through the darkness.... At a mature size of less than 2 inches, these snails can use the 24 mucus glands they have on their wings to produce a 6 ft sheet of mucus they use to catch plankton. Pacific Grove, where I live, is known as the Butterfly Capital. With dwindling monarch populations around the world, numbers are almost non-existent here now. Happy to at least be able to still find them under the waves. Ralph Pace

Saturn and Jupiter under the Milky Way over Fremont Peak last week. Towards the end of the night there was some traffic coming down the hill that provided some fun flares in the lens. Ralph Pace Photography

The water is cold and jellies are thick. A solid smack of pacific sea nettles that certainly charged me the tax on visiting them yesterday. Having made it over 80 minutes without a sting the gauge got low and the gauntlet had to be run. Surfacing through the mine field of stingers is actually quite comical. No matter the route you set, you have to pay your debt. Happy these guys are back around and happy to see the life that comes here to eat them. #monterey Ralph Pace Photography