I wasn't feeling that great even though it was a beautiful day. one of our house cleaners came around noon and I was grateful for him to talk to. My wife had taken one of our cars into be serviced because of the mileage and had gotten a ride home with the dealership. So, I was supposed to drive her back at some point and pick up her car. However, I wasn't really feeling safe to drive today because I'm still recovering from my new medicine Bumetanide that went sideways on me Friday and Saturday. So, I had him drive my wife and I to get her car and we took our dog (a corgi) along for the ride.
On the way home we went to the beach and walked along the beach with our dog which was nice as it was a truly gorgeous day and there were two sea otters out there for the 2nd time that had been there 2 days ago. They seem to move around as they eat the sea urchins and other things that they like to eat. The put the sea urchin on their chests I think and then bring up a rock from the bottom of the ocean to crack open the sea urchin on. This is their favorite food. By eating Sea urchins they also save the kelp forests here because otherwise the Spiny Sea urchins eat the stems of the kelp forests. Here where I live smaller fish live in the kelp beds much like smaller fish living in tropical areas in coral beds in places like Hawaii and Australia. So, since there are no coral beds this far north the smaller fish survive in the kelp beds instead. So, because Spiny Sea urchins are the sea otters favorite food they provide part of the balance of nature here in preserving the kelp beds and the lives of all the smaller fishes that live there in the kelp beds for safety all the way up and down the California Coast and likely up into Oregon and Washington too.
However, another thing has been also happening this last week which is high winds off the oceans coming from the north which made the seas very choppy. This is usually something that happens more in winter storms than in the summer which brought in tons of kelp beds who were ripped off of rocks they attach to with their roots and washed onto shore with their roots. I'm not used to seeing 3 foot high of kelp with waves crashing against it at the beach in summer. But, that is what I saw today walking along next to the ocean. also, when it does often the ocean washes up the sand over some of the kelp washed onshore and then when you walk sometimes you fall through the sand and kelp down a little bit. But, often I still walkl over this because I'm used to doing this most of my living near the ocean from Puget Sound in Seattle to San Diego, to Los Angeles and now the coast nearer to San Francisco. So, mostly I have lived near the ocean all my life in Seattle, and in California and in Hawaii except for some years in Mt. Shasta and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
This is what sea urchins look like. We have the purple variety in California.
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