We are blessed to live on the Monterey Bay where we are surrounded by amazing natural beauty. Ed Dickie is a local photographer who has captured much of the area in gorgeous photographs. Ed lets us see our world in a new and vibrant way. Please take a look at his website to see the Monterey Bay through an expert lens, www.eddickie.com.
A group of us hiked a section of our Walk the Bay trip yesterday, Manresa Beach to Palm Beach. One of our detours took us off the beach to the paved road and parking area for Sunset Beach. Clean restrooms and cold water for our water bottles were worth the short detour. When we continued south on the road, we came to a path that was blocked to traffic. Following this path we discovered it was formerly a paved road. Mother Nature had filled in most of the roadway and native plants and birds had reclaimed the scenic pathway. Standig water stopped our progress in about 1/4 mile and we hiked up the dune to return to the beach. It was then we spied some gorgeous wetlands below, right next to our path.
How wonderful to see a paved road become a wild path and eventually a protected wetland for migrating birds!
I’ve seen many more white pelicans around the Monterey Bay this year. They are 1/3 larger than our brown pelicans and love the waterways near our beaches. When you spot a group, spend a little time and watch how they fish. Unlike the graceful diving brown pelicans, the white pelicans have figured out an effective low effort fishing method. You won’t catch them trying to dive for dinner.
Good places to look for white pelicans along the Walk the Bay route are Zmudowski Beach, behind the dunes; Moss Landing Harbor, near Jetty Road; and, Saline Pond about 1 miles south of the mouth of the Salinas River, just off the beach over a small dune.
If you Walk the Bay, you won’t miss seeing the two giant smokestacks that rise above Moss Landing. They are visible for much of the first two days of walking. What are they? And, what are they doing?
The first power plant at Moss Landing started operation in 1950 with five small units. In 1964, units 6 and 7 started operation. Their stacks are the two tall ones that you can see at 500 feet high. Natural gas (methane) powered, using 1.2 billion gallons of water a day units 6 and 7 only operate June to September. The rest of the time two smaller, more efficient units operate.
A company called Calera is making 10 ton test batches of cement a day by bubbling the effluent from the Moss Landing smokestacks through sea water. The CO2 combines with the calcium and magnesium in the sea water to make cement. Cement kilns in the US generate more CO2 than the airline industry and are the third largest emitter of CO2 in the country. Current processing emits 1 ton of CO2 for every ton of cement created. Calera’s process sequesters ½ ton of CO2 for every ton of cement created. Pull CO2 out of the air and sequester it in something we need… brilliant!!
Sea lions love to hang out together on sandy beaches during the mating season in May and June. This year is quite a banner year for group sun bathing along the shores near the Walk the Bay finish line at Old Fisherman’s Wharf. I took this shot yesterday on a beautiful Sunday morning. The only mammals more plentiful on this sunny weekend in Monterey were the humans.
