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Monterey Bay is our backyard. We’re lucky to be able to see the biggest creatures on earth gorge on krill and anchovies on a regular basis. It never gets ‘old’ to us.We like to take a boat out of Moss Landing because it gets you quickly to where whales are feeding over the deep Monterey Canyon. During the upwelling season – April, May and June – cold water from the depths brings nutrients to the surface, which stimulates phytoplankton growth.

“Plastic is one of the worst enemies of marine species,” the World Wildlife Fund.We’ve all read too many headlines about plastic floating in the ocean, not breaking down, washing up on every beach, being eaten by marine creatures, and entangling lots of others. Scientists are now trying to figure out what exactly that means for all the life in the ocean – and us.

This week, a series of large winter storms delivered hundreds of strange rocks riddled with perfectly smooth drill holes. A treasure trove to curious beachcombers, begs the question, “Who or what made all those holes?!”The holes are the work of industrious molluscs called piddock clams or, more commonly, boring clams. Some 16 different species of not-so-boring clams call Monterey Bay home

When the Shape of Life team was in Long Beach for the National Marine Educators conference, we visited the Aquarium of the Pacific. We were admiring a giant clam when a guide heard us and said that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) had confiscated this clam, as well as some others, as they were coming into the U.S. illegally. Sadly, FWS often confiscates fresh and saltwater fish and invertebrates from all over the world when they come into the U.S., mainly for the illegal pet trade. Aquariums have stepped in to help; here are some examples.  Giant clam Tridacna gigas on a coral reef

It’s very easy to see sea urchin fertilization, cell division and embryonic development under a microscope. Realizing that the animals could be a great teaching tool in the classroom, the sea urchin development lab at Stanford’s University’s Hopkins Marine Station, led by Dr. Dave Epel, created the “Virtual Urchin” website. The goal of this project is to provide inquiry based lessons, available on a freely-accessible, open access website.

Bristlecone Pines (Pinus Longaeva) At a time when the UN reports climate genocide – it sure did my heart good to tromp among the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. If you are ever near the White Mountains of the Great Basin in the shadow of the Eastern Sierra—do NOT miss this extraordinary side-trip. 

Dinosaurs are indisputably amazing —their gigantic size, their predatory bent, their mysterious mass extinction. But would you believe that a completely different group of voracious monsters dominated our planet two hundred million years before the first dinosaur evolved? They were cephalopods, the ancestors of today’s squid and octopus. 

I have always wanted to see flocks of migrating shorebirds on their way to their breeding grounds in Alaska. The Copper River Delta is the best place to see this spectacle, so I went there with my sister and two naturalists who have studied migratory shorebirds for decades. 

We’ve all heard that coral reefs are under threat from climate change. We’ve seen the devastating photos of coral bleaching: rising ocean temperatures cause these catastrophic events. As if a warming ocean wasn’t enough, the corals are facing another hazard. Over the last 200 years, humans have released about two trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; about of a quarter of that has entered the ocean. All this carbon dioxide is slowly making the ocean more acidic – called ocean acidification.

There’s a whole universe of life in the ocean we can’t see – thousands of tiny animals make up the zooplankton. Animals we commonly see in tidepools, and sometimes on our plates, begin their lives drifting in plankton. Planktonic larval stage in life gives species a way to disperse. The larvae develop while adrift at sea, often going through many stages before reaching adult body form.