Meeeeeeh, everybody!

That’s the sound that baby fur seals make, or at least something very similar. That’s what I heard aboard the Island Explorer as it crossed the Santa Barbara Channel on its way to Santa Rosa Island! This was a last-minute adventure, the last day of the season for boats going to Santa Rosa, and I sure was glad that I decided to go! If I’d stayed home, I wouldn’t have had a chance to meet Bell and Clock Oso the fur seals on their way to be released back into the wild!

These youngsters had been rescued from San Pedro and Dana Point, respectively, two very unusual places for fur seals to be! Fur seals prefer to stay far out at sea and only come ashore at places like the Channel Islands, where they know there won’t be people. If one shows up on the mainland, it’s in trouble! That’s where the Marine Mammal Center comes in!

This cool organization has been rescuing and rehabilitating marine animals since 1975, and they’ve made a huge difference in the lives of over 18,000 marine mammals, mostly seals and sea lions! Plus, even though the seals were pretty grumpy, Jen and Joann were super nice and let me tag along to watch the release after everyone else got off the boat at Santa Rosa. All it took was a quick slip over the edge, and Bell and Clock Oso were on their way to full, furry lives!

It’s also be important to note that Bell and Clock Oso were part of an unusually large number of seal and sea lion pups that had to be rescued this year from San Diego to Santa Barbara (900 between January and March alone)! This is probably because of a herring die-off, but no one knows for sure what’s killing the herring! Resources are stretched tight (these pups had to jump from rescue center to rescue center for almost a year), and the Marine Mammal Center has lost a lot of funding lately! Please visit their website to learn how you can support their efforts!

It’s really amazing how different each island in the Channel Islands is from each other! While Santa Cruz was high, dry, and jagged like a scorpion, Santa Rosa is smooth, rolling and olive green rather than gold! It’s easy to see from its deep valleys how this island was once home to herds of pygmy mammoths! Otherwise, Santa Rosa is one of two places in the world where a beaver can find Torrey pines (Pinus torreyana, named after botanist, John Torrey)! These trees are a huge success story! Once only numbering 200 at the start of the 20th century, there are now over 3,000 between Santa Rosa and San Diego! They’re lovely, hardy trees that add lots of character to the coast! Plus, they have cones that are bigger than I am!

I had meant to see these pines for a bit, then explore the whole rest of the island! What I hadn’t counted on was that I would only get 4 hours on the island (3 after watching the seal release)! That meant I had to hustle a mean bustle to see the trees, which were 2.5 miles from the pier! Luckily, one of the Island Packers, named Scott, goes running on every Channel Island where they stop, so I fell into stride with him (I may have short legs, but you’d be amazed at my RPM)! We ran past some glorious white beaches before separating at the Torrey Pine grove. That led me up, around, and back with almost no time to spare before I was jogging right back to the pier!

Santa Rosa is still very much an island in development. As one volunteer told me, there isn’t a sign, a passport stamp, or even a visitor’s center! The historic ranch houses from Santa Rosa’s once thriving sheep industry have not yet been reinforced to allow visitors inside safely! In some ways, that’s kind of nice. Santa Rosa Island doesn’t have the same popularity as Anacapa and Santa Cruz. It’s very remote and just the right place to enjoy nature for nature’s sake.

What happened after boarding the boat must live on only in memory, as my camera battery bit the dust! We saw four spectacular humpback whales, and we pulled further into Painted Cave (one of the largest and deepest sea caves in the world) than many boats had gone before! However, the highlight of the entire trip came when I woke up from a brief nap to look at the sunset. We were surrounded by a pod of several hundred common dolphins, and as I stepped to the back of the boat to take in the sunset, I was left with the image of brilliant orange and pink water erupting with dolphins as far as the eye could see! Perhaps it’s better that my camera battery died. Sometimes, you need to see things without the interference of a screen!

Anchor’s aweigh!