Day Off report by Elfreida:

For those of us with Earthwatch on the bottlenose dolphin and sea otter project we have a day off so Renee and I decided to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We walked along the Pacific Ocean enjoying the water, rocks and harbor seals on our left and admiring the beautiful Victorian homes on the right. We also saw some old buildings which once were canneries and now house shops of some kind or another.

At 10:00 we entered the aquarium for an exciting day of sea life explorations. Due to my great interest in penguins, my first stop was the penguins exhibit. These penguins are the African penguins which like all other penguins are black and white but they have black feet and a white ring of feathers around the head. On to the jellies, the kelp forest and the sharks, mola mola, dorado or mahi mahi tank. I spend a great deal of time at this exhibit and also watched the sea otters play and eat. We watched all the films being shown in the auditorium and I spent a considerable amount of time selecting books to take back to Minnesota. The California sea otters are very playful, so it was great watching them play ball in the aquarium as well as open and eat clams in the wild. About 4 o'clock we were tired and I was hungry so we made a short stop at the Save the Otter shop next door and I had coffee and a berry sundae at Ghiradelli before we walked home.