I’m discombobulated recently. My work site has been down for 11 days. It’s raining a lot here–turns out California has weather after all. Trump was inaugurated on Friday, then the next day his press secretary instructed the US press in the proper use of Newspeak. I experienced the Women’s March only vicariously, through many friends and my husband. I’ve been watching a lot of football, a sport with family connections for me that’s now more guilt-inducing than shopping at Walmart. So today I’m going to center myself by thinking about Monterey Bay and the MB Submarine Canyon.

The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is a seething cauldron of sea life, including over 2500 species of invertebrates, 500 species of fish, 200 types of shorebirds, 25 species of cetaceans, 6 species of seals and sea lions, and the region’s most iconic representative, the recovering-but-still-endangered sea otter. The sanctuary is centered on Monterey Bay, which stretches about 22 miles between Santa Cruz and Monterey. When the fog and clouds allow, you can see the entire bay from many vantage points. What you can’t see is the Canyon.

Just off Moss Landing, near the center of the bay’s coast, is the head of a submarine canyon twice as deep and as third as long as the Grand Canyon, the largest offshore canyon in North America. It extends 60 miles west to its mouth, reaching a depth of over 2 miles. Its origins are a bit of a mystery, but current thinking is it was created 250 miles south about 25 million years ago, and is migrating north at 1.5 inches per year. It continues to be altered by water, weather, and seismic events.

The canyon and the wildlife are interrelated. One example: During certain times of the year, prevailing northwest winds push surface water seaward, and deep water rises–upwells–to replace it. Much of this deep water comes from the canyon, so it is both very cold and packed with nutrients and minerals which have accumulated at the bottom. These feed phytoplankton, the unicellular plants at the base of the food web of the ocean that also provide at least 50% of Earth’s atmospheric oxygen.

Marine habitats around Monterey Bay include tidepools, estuaries, rocky shores, kelp forests, and all the living zones of the ocean you see in this figure*; pelagic creatures move in the open sea, while benthic creatures live on the sea floor.

There is a large marine science community here, studying all aspects of marine biology, chemistry, and geology, and the proximity of the canyon is a draw. As one fellow pointed out to my docent class, he can spend a long day operating a remotely-controlled submersible in very deep water in the canyon then eat dinner at home, while East-coast scientists looking to experiment in similar depths start with a two-day boat ride.

Sixty percent of the Earth’s surface is deep sea, yet we know very little about it. Some animals, such as whales and sea elephants, spend significant time near the surface or on land, but their deep-sea habits are still mysterious to us. New technology for tracking and observation is helping us to learn not just cool facts, but helpful ones. Examples: Elephant seals spend two to eight months each year diving in the open ocean, and can dive to greater depths and for longer than most whales.  The California sheephead grows to a certain size as a female, then changes sex and grows more; fisherman trying helpfully to limit their catch to the “big ones” were exterminating the breeding males. A sound at a decibel level that would be acceptable in your living room, broadcast underwater from California, can easily be heard in Japan, so it’s unsurprising that human noises have been observed to disorient fish, many of which communicate and identify food and predators by sound.

* http://archive.cnx.org/contents/cbe4eb5b-ce12-49a3-a449-a1aa75fb6a88@3/aquatic-and-marine-biomes