"It's not pixar, it's my backyard."

Sometimes we drill the Earth in search of a wellspring and we find a pocket of geothermal activity. This geyser in Nevada's Black Rock Desert is such.

http://www.thecircumference.org/fly-geyser

Pacific Ocean as seen from Jenner, CA

One of the many beautiful beaches in Northern California is located just north of Jenner, where the mouth of the Russian River spits out into the Pacific Ocean.  Here's some footage I took from Highway One.

Seals eating a salmon:

Solenopsis, Glaucus Atlanticus, Elysia Chlorotica, Macropinna Microstoma, and Latinus Maximus

Well whoop-de-do.  It's pretty amazing how these little guys band together to form a living raft (complete with air pockets for the submerged ants to breath).  Video here.


Image from National Geographic.

Look at the spectacular Blue Dragon, or Blue Sea Slug:



Another pretty sea slug is Elysia Cholortica, or the Eastern Emerald Seaslug, which is quite amazing because it uses chloroplasts from the algae it consumes to convert sunlight into energy and lives off it like a plant. 

If you're interested in seeing more photographs of nude nudibranchs, National Geographic offers a slideshow and informative video.

And no presentation of random animals would be complete without the barreleye fish that has a transparent head:

Continent of Plastic

Plastic in the Pacific, a short documentary from KQED Quest, explores how some highly proactive groups are taking steps to clean up the massive plastic cesspool called the North Pacific Gyre, aka the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  One suggestion is to burn it, thus creating a hardened plastic landmass.  (The Vice people also went there and produced a piece called Garbage Island.)

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area and are interested in coastal conservation opportunities, you may watch to check out the Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association website (I've heard excellent things about their Beach Watch program). 

Also, if you want to learn about overfishing, check out the documentary End of the Line - A World Without Fish.  Here's the trailer:

Lastly, Dr. Callum Roberts, author of The Unnatural History of the Sea, provides a general depiction of marine degredation in this episode of Micho Kaku's radio show Exploration.

Kayaking through the Arch at Goat Rock

I enjoy cursing at my close friends.
Rock on...

And now this spell was snapt: once more
I viewed the ocean green,
And look'd far forth, yet little saw
Of what had else been seen—
Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turn'd round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
But soon there breathed a wind on me,
Nor sound nor motion made:
Its path was not upon the sea,
In ripple or in shade.
It raised my hair, it fann'd my cheek
Like a meadow-gale of spring—
It mingled strangely with my fears,
Yet it felt like a welcoming.

-Excerpt from Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.