Category Archives: Monterey Bay Aquarium

About those abs…

They were sure good!

We had a full day beginning with a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where a large part of time was spent at the new seahorse exhibit. If you get a chance, make sure to visit the Aquarium and check out the seahorses – the exhibit is laid out beautifully and the seahorses are magnificent!

We cruised home, grabbed a bite of tuna sandwiches and everyone caught a quick nap before moving in to ab-prep mode.

Owen and I cleaned / prepped two abs for dinner, made artichokes and a separate dish of herbed wild rice and sat down to feast. I cooked the abs and, as best I can tell, two abs and 30 minutes later, everyone was stuffed. Owen said it tasted even better than when he was a kid; it was Liv’s first ab dinner and (judging by the amount she polished off) she loved it, too.

Gram’s and Liv cleaned up (while Owen set up the tent for some backyard camping, I think), I grabbed a hot bath and we all settled in to watch Queen videos until 10:30 when I started the procession off to bed. (nite, all)

Another great day, a lot of fun family memories made… yet again.

As always, thanks for stopping by, be well and don’t forget to write when you get work.

Fresh Pacific Octopus, anyone?


If so, you don’t mind getting it from the shelf by yourself, do you?

Owen took this pic when they visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium a few weeks ago. This particular creature is not unlike the nesting female octopus Owen and I stumbled across, tucked under a ledge protecting her brood back during one of our dive trips off Carmel back in the late 80’s.

That day we launched our Boston Whaler Guardian Divemaster out of Monterey, then headed south to a favorite dive spot just off the house called The Castle, located off the 17 Mile Drive. We were over an area that was hundreds of feet deep, but we anchored over an outcropping of rocks that came up from the bottom to about 60′ of the surface and headed down looking for Ling Cod.

We were working over a few ledges when out of the corner of my eye, a huge Ling – easily over 40 lbs, about 4.5’+ long – cruised by over another ledge and headed down to deeper water. Owen spotted it, too, so we began to follow it, hoping to snag Moby Ling in time for dinner that night.

Not to be… Moby had gone really deep in a few short seconds, so Owen and I returned to checking under ledges / small caves using our dive lights. Suddenly we came across a very large female Pacific Octopus guarding her brood. Scared the hell out of us! This was one big creature, very long tentacles with very large suckers up near her body… large as in coffee-saucer size. We cautiously cruised around her for a few minutes and not wanting to push our luck (neither of us being familiar with Octo-personalities), we cruised back up over the reef and headed toward the boat – which we could see anchored up top. Owen and I still talk about Moby Ling and what a neat dive that was.

Thanks for stopping by, be well and don’t forget to write when you get work.
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