Sealife of Moss Landing and Elkorn Slough

Under the waters off the Monterey coastline lies an undersea canyon that's deeper than the Grand Canyon. Ocean upwelling brings cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface, supporting blooms of phytoplankton and seaweed, the foundation of a vibrant food chain. Because of this undersea geography, it's one of the best places to see whales along the west coast. In the spring, Gray whales with their newborns travel through here as they return from the warm lagoons of Mexico, migrating back up to their Oregon and Alaska feeding grounds. Pods of Orca whales wait for the vulnerable calves in ambush, attacking from below as they float over the canyon. In late summer, Humpbacks and Blue Whales come here to feed. Unlike the Gray and Blue whales, Humpbacks are energetic hunters that feed on baitfish as well as krill. They tend to be a lot more fun to watch, lunge feeding at the surface, scooping up large mouthfuls of anchovies. In some years the anchovy boom can be massive, attracting feeding frenzies of tens of thousands of seabirds that stretch hundreds of miles down the coastline.

At the end of Monterey's undersea canyon, Elkhorn Slough drains into the ocean. This estuary is a rare sanctuary along the California coast, protected as habitat for the many species that reside there. Most natural harbors throughout the state have been turned into marinas and have been scoured of much of their marine life. The main channel of Elkhorn Slough though has been protected through a combined effort of state and federal government, and private landowners (including the Nature Conservancy). No fishing or extraction of other marine resources is allowed here, so the area is able to sustain healthy populations of sea otters and harbor seals. Within the sheltered waters, they feed within the eel grass, munching on crabs and shellfish amongst the onlooking kayakers and paddle-boarders. Protected places like Elkhorn Slough are illustrations of the kind of healthy ecosystems we should be trying to preserve.

There are few places left on Earth where ecosystems still exist in a truly natural state, unaffected by humans. Often those places that we regard as wild only appear so in comparison to the urbanized world in which we now live. In many ways we've tilted the balance, altering Earth's natural order in a way that's unprecedented throughout the planet's deep history. We humans no longer occupy just some small niche within the food chain. The entire planet is our habitat. We dine on a smorgasbord of plants and animals from across the globe. Even those species we don't directly eat are affected by our choices, as we extract the food and nutrients they depend upon, or clear that habitat to make way for agriculture or urbanization. Our impact is so widespread, from hunting to ocean acidity to climate change, that most people see few examples of what nature looks like without human influence.

At the same time though, humans can't be seen as completely separate from nature. We too evolved here. Like other species we predominately act in our own self-interest, focused primarily on the preservation of our kind. While we're unique, we're also driven by many of the same biological drives. But across the globe the enormous success of our species is pushing others to the brink, impacting entire food-chains, often with unforeseen consequences to the entire ecosystem's wellbeing.

To illustrate this point, consider the sea otters that reside at Elkhorn Slough. They were once heavily hunted for their pelts, and were almost pushed into extinction, decimated from a worldwide population of hundreds of thousands down to only about 1,000-2,000 individuals. A staple food of sea otters' diets are sea urchins, so with the loss of otters, urchin populations exploded. And since these urchins feed upon kelp, a consequence of otters almost getting wiped out is that the kelp forests have been shrinking, eaten down to the bare seafloor akin to undersea deserts. Sea otters are still listed as endangered species, but due to protections placed on marine mammals in the 1970s, their populations are now bouncing back. And in those areas, kelp forests are experiencing more rapid growth as a consequence, which now provides habitat and food for other marine species, helping to not only protect these species, but also to support healthier fisheries.