About 30 minutes south of Santa Cruz along Highway 1 is the small fishing town of Moss Landing. Along with a power plant, it has one of California’s largest estuaries and the highest concentration of sea otters on the central coast and quite possibly in the state.
Along with sea otters, harbor seals, pelicans, sea lions, cormorants, snowy egrets, great blue herons and more all live or spend time here. I was able to capture just a glimpse of the amazing wildlife that you can see everywhere you look every time you visit this magical place.
I’ve spent time kayaking there, but I’d never really gone out just to take photos. So I rented a telephoto lens (50-500) and a tripod from lensrentals.com, and I headed out for 3 days. I’m tempted to do it again, since 2 of those 3 days had cloudy mornings, but I think I did OK for my first time out. Which one do you like best?
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- Sea otter raft
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- Kayakers checking out the otters
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- Keeping clean
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- Morning at Elkhorn Slough
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- At night, sometimes the otters haul out onto the beach.
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- Sea otter tracks
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- Sea lions hanging out on the wharf
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- Munching on a crab
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- Snowy egret grabs a snack
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- Sea otters and seals hauled out
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- Taking a nap
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- Exploring the kayak
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- Now what’s this do?
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- On the move
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- What’s going on?
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- Stretching
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- They have to clean themselves to help keep warm
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- Playing, fighting, it’s all the same
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- Watch out guys, I was trying to sleep.
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- Pelicans at dusk
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- Harbor seals at dusk
I like them all, but a few favorites are munching on the crab and kayak and the pelicans and the footprints.
My favorites include “Sea otter tracks,” “Sea lions hanging out…” and “Snowy egret grabs a snack.”
Kristin, these are beautiful. Takes me back to when Chet and I drove Hwy 1 and saw so many such sights. Thanks.