Ship Rock/Marine Mammal Adventures

Our last few days were full of adventures. We did a few recreational dives, made it to the other side of the island, swam with mammals, and played ocean-themed games with our classmates and teachers. On Monday night, we were introduced to some visiting world travelers. These two lucky people had won the Our World Underwater Scholarship, allowing them to travel around the world to dive and explore possible career paths in marine biology. We agreed to take them on an exploratory dive the next morning so they could experience the California wildlife.

Ship Rock. The next morning, we all loaded up the boat to go to Ship Rock. Ship Rock is a tiny rocky island covered in bird poop. We had never ventured that far from the marine station before, so we were lucky that our T.A. Sara agreed to take us there. The two scholarship students wore drysuits! We descended into a massive field of Sargassum. We went to about 60 feet deep and circled around Ship Rock. We saw thousands of coral anemones (Corynactis), a vividly-colored kelpfish, a strange iridescent blue algae, huge gorgonians, an unfamiliar species of large brown algae, and many other fascinating creatures.

A large Lithopoma with many epiphytes growing on it.

A sea star and some coral anemones.

An unfamiliar but interesting species of brown algae.

A kelpfish we found around 50 feet deep.

Some pretty iridescent blue algae. When we came up, we found ourselves facing three seals lounging on Ship Rock. A large pelican sat on the rocks above them.

We saw dolphins in the distance, so we decided to get in the boat and go follow them. We ended up in the middle of a huge group of sea lions and dolphins! They played in our boat wake and got close enough to us that we could hear them communicating. Sara stopped the boat and we all jumped out to swim with them. Being so close to so many marine mammals was amazing. They must have been following a large school of fish. It would have been mind-blowing to witness them hunting.