We now have the virtual bay

Social distancing and local restrictions on congregating along the coast have reduced our direct interactions with friends and the coast and waters of the Monterey Bay. The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is known for the diversity of marine life and for the marine science institutions, researchers and students dedicated to the continued search to better understand our underwater world. Many of these institutions provide virtual links to their studies as well as videos and photos of the Monterey Bay marine ecosystems. So, while we are limited in our direct interactions with the ocean, the web resources listed below provide a wealth of entertaining marine knowledge.

Let’s start simple. Everyone loves webcams running in the background while pretending to pay attention to our sixth web meeting of the morning. Here is a great way to keep track of the squid boats and sea otters off the Monterey coast as well as virtually enjoy many of the Monterey Bay Aquarium exhibits (https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/livecams/monterey-bay-cam). The Aquarium provides a great set of live webcams and short informational videos about the animals of the bay. The moon jelly, penguin, aviary and the kelp forest webcams are but a few of the backgrounds that can be played live on your laptop. There are many other webcams pointed toward our coast and the Santa Cruz — Monterey Cam website provides links to many (www.rntl.net/santacruzcam.htm).

Amity Wood of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary notes “there are some fantastic 360 virtual dive photos of MBNMS (and other sanctuaries), as well as a 360 virtual dive video available for the public at: https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/ vr/. You don’t need a VR headset, but it enhances the immersive experience.” The Sanctuary “One Breath” film that is usually shown at the Sanctuary Exploration Center theater is now available on line www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BBNgLbiUvU&t=255s and there is a cool video from the E/ V Nautilus expedition

to Davidson Seamount of a “whale fall” demonstrating the importance of dead marine mammals to deep sea ecosystems www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ta8AbxYNI .

Care to take a 35 minute virtual scuba dive into the kelp forests of the Monterey Bay; then an Undersea Imagery Archive virtual immersive dive is the “charter” for you ( https://csumb.edu/undersea/immersive-vr-videos). The Cal State Monterey Bay site features multiple VR videos of scuba dives within the Sanctuary.

The SIMON website https://sanctuarysimon. org/ is a great repository of marine research within the California sanctuaries. The site provides information on more than 180 research projects and 5,000 photos of marine species and habitats. Diving deeper into the data, CeNCOOS.org provides links to hundreds of marine data sets. Changes in water temperature, phytoplankton density and kelp cover can be plotted on maps of the coast to investigate seasonal and geographic patters. CeNCOOS also maps bird and mammal strandings (used to track these off shore populations) found by the BeachCOMBERS volunteers that walk Sanctuary beaches every month.

Want to watch local scientist present their marine research, check out the Moss Landing Marine Labs seminar webpage where they broadcast live and previously recorded seminars on a variety of marine science related disciplines https://www. mlml.calstate.edu/mlmllive-stream/.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) has launched a website that enable everyone to experience the underwater sounds of the Monterey Bay (www.mbari. org/soundscape-listeningroom). A second web portal allows us to visualize the soundscape of the bay and scroll through months of recordings, looking for unique vocalizations (www.mbari.org/at-sea/cabled-observatory/mars-science-experiments/marshydrophone-data/). Many animal songs can be spotted on the spectrograms. Marine mammals, boat noise and even rain drops on the ocean surface 900 meters above can be seen and heard.

All of these sites provide a special glimpse into our underwater backyard while we are asked to remain at home.

Ross Clark is the director of the Central Coast Wetlands Group at

Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. He’s also a member of the county Commission on the Environment and the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Research Activity Panel. Contact him at features@ santacruzsentinel.com