Mated pair of Brandt's Cormorants tend to the nest they have built on sea cliffs. Note the colors they assume during mating season: striking blue gular pouch (throat) along with faint blue-green iridescence in their plumage.
Species: Brandt's cormorant, Phalacrocorax penicillatus
Location: La Jolla, California
Image ID: 40135
Drift kelp, a kelp paddy, floating patch of kelp on the open ocean which attracts marine life and forms of moving oasis of life, an open ocean habitat, aerial photo.
Species: Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera
Location: California
Image ID: 29083
Macrocystis kelp growing up from a rocky reef, the kelp's holdfast is like a root cluster which attaches the kelp to the rocky reef on the oceans bottom. Kelp blades are visible above the holdfast, swaying in the current.
Species: Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera
Location: San Clemente Island, California
Image ID: 37053
Kelp fronds and pneumatocysts. Pneumatocysts, gas-filled bladders, float the kelp plant off the ocean bottom toward the surface and sunlight, where the leaf-like blades and stipes of the kelp plant grow fastest. Giant kelp can grow up to 2' in a single day given optimal conditions. Epic submarine forests of kelp grow throughout California's Southern Channel Islands.
Species: Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera
Location: San Clemente Island, California
Image ID: 37054
Kelp fronds and pneumatocysts. Pneumatocysts, gas-filled bladders, float the kelp plant off the ocean bottom toward the surface and sunlight, where the leaf-like blades and stipes of the kelp plant grow fastest. Giant kelp can grow up to 2' in a single day given optimal conditions. Epic submarine forests of kelp grow throughout California's Southern Channel Islands.
Species: Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera
Location: San Clemente Island, California
Image ID: 37076
Kelp fronds and pneumatocysts. Pneumatocysts, gas-filled bladders, float the kelp plant off the ocean bottom toward the surface and sunlight, where the leaf-like blades and stipes of the kelp plant grow fastest. Giant kelp can grow up to 2' in a single day given optimal conditions. Epic submarine forests of kelp grow throughout California's Southern Channel Islands.
Species: Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera
Location: San Clemente Island, California
Image ID: 37101
Sunlight glows throughout a giant kelp forest. Giant kelp, the fastest growing plant on Earth, reaches from the rocky reef to the ocean's surface like a submarine forest.
Species: Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera
Location: San Clemente Island, California
Image ID: 37103
Sunlight glows throughout a giant kelp forest. Giant kelp, the fastest growing plant on Earth, reaches from the rocky reef to the ocean's surface like a submarine forest.
Species: Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera
Location: San Clemente Island, California
Image ID: 37126
Sunlight glows throughout a giant kelp forest. Giant kelp, the fastest growing plant on Earth, reaches from the rocky reef to the ocean's surface like a submarine forest.
Species: Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera
Location: San Clemente Island, California
Image ID: 37128
Garibaldi in kelp forest, Catalina Island.
Image ID: 37145