The conference is over. And my flight out of Monterey  is about  to board. I  got a  chance last night to  go to the Aquarium here, which is great. This is a shot in one of the jellyfish tanks. Very  amazing. And we were able  to ask a whole lot of questions of  one of the staff here, who was extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastically answered all questions. I learned a lot about jellyfish, which, it turns out are pretty amazing. Turns out they are kind of on the threshold of  being animals  at  all. They have  no organs, and hardly any concentration of nerves  which could be considered a 'brain' of any kind. So beautiful though. This particular one also happens to be quite poisonous.

Finally I got this creature,  whatever it is to cooperate.  It  was  being  coy the  whole  time,  but this shot should  make it identifiable. Several  other folks here at the conference also thought it  was a sea otter. Since it's somewhat uncommon to see, I'm kind  of excited. Again, if anyone has better id.  abilities pls weigh in.

Conference is  pretty much over for me.  It's  pack up, airport, home.  Well  worth the trip. 

From my beach walk this morning, in the tidal pools which form when the water levels are low. At high tide all this would be underwater as you  can see by the kelp. The first shot is an anemone, I think, and  the second I'm pretty sure is a crab. I don't know  what kind of crab though. Someone help  me out with the id.

The ocean is so beautiful, you just sort of point your camera in that general direction and snap the shutter, and something good is likely to happen:

From my morning walk after breakfast. I found several starfish in an intertidal pool just kind of sitting there. They actually look kind of fake, starfish do. But on closer inspection you can see that it's moving, albeit slowly. And there's little tentacles or suction feet things on the bottom that it seems  to be able to (slowly) deploy. The movement reminds me of how a snail or slug moves. I guess they're in the same family. 

For those of you from California, I suppose this is no big deal, but I wandered down to the beach again between workshops and dinner and came across a bunch of seals (harbor seals, I think), just hanging out on the rocks. For me this was very exciting, although for locals maybe it's like seeing a squirrel, or a raccoon or something, I don't know. I was actually looking for seals, out in the ocean, so when I glanced down and saw them just out there in the open on the rocks it was pretty cool (for me). Also some black thing swimming around pretty fast, which I'm guessing was a sea otter--check the first photo. If anyone knows, please confirm. Whatever it was, was kind of camera shy, and both times when I saw it, it soon disappeared when I lifted my camera.

This is that sound I could hear last night. I got up this morning before breakfast and went for a walk. This beach has been turned into a state nature preserve, and is two minutes walk from my room. At breakfast the various people I was sharing the table with were all talking about how beautiful it is here. None of them were from this area. There were 3 Canadians, 1 Kiwi, 1 Texan, 1 New Yorker, and 1 Oregon(er??). Anyhow, for all of you who said I should take a couple extra days and just wander here: I am very sorry I ignored your advice. First workshop starts in 15 minutes. Gotta run.

I've arrived at the conference centre where I'll be for the next few days...conferencing. It was 64 degrees when the plane landed which is what in Celsius? All I know it's a big relief. Let's say it's the temperature where you think, "should I put a sweater on, or just stay in a t-shirt?"

Sorry no photo yet since it was also dark when I arrived. Tomorrow morning though, first thing, I promise. Well, maybe right after breakfast. What I can tell you is that I can hear the ocean. At first I thought it was was a highway, but no, it's waves breaking on a beach...I'm telling you, it is going to be very tempting just to skip out on the  meetings  altogether and just wander around here, even the conference grounds literature says there's lots to see. No one would even know...

For those of you that wonder what I do when I'm not travelling, here's my list of stuff I did today:
1. Got up
2. Ate breakfast
3. Corresponded with contacts in SE Asia about a trip planned to that area
4. Worked on planning ideas for a new program (somewhere in Africa--location to be revealed)
5. Helped translate a technical document about plant propagation into Haitian Creole (used Google Translate)
6. Researched and downloaded data on tree cover in SE Asia  (see image below)
7. Packed
8. Went to airport
9. Sat at airport
10. Still sitting at airport

A full day really.

This file shows percent tree cover in 2010 for part of South East Asia. Most of the work is done in advance by folks at NASA and their partners. Estimating tree cover is not an easy thing and there are a number of ways of doing it, each with varying levels of reliability. Interpreting the data for our purposes or in order to be able to post it on a blog like this is another whole step.