California surprises.

April 26, Ventura.

As I walked down the waterfront with Dylan asleep in the stroller I stopped to read information panels on the area's environment and learnt a few surprising things about this area of southern California.
Ventura's beaches line the Santa Barbara channel, "one of the biologically richest areas of the world. The channel is located in a biogeographic transition zone, where Northern and Southern marine plant and animal species mix when cold waters from the north and warm currents fro the south converge, producing a swirling eddy called the Santa Barbara Gyre."
In the distance you could see an island, faintly, and imagine others at its side, smaller. I learnt on another panel that those were part of the Channel Islands. The three islets on the left are the Anacapa Islands, and the big one on the right is called the Santa Cruz Island. These islands are home to more than 100 plant and animal species found nowhere else in the world.
Trying to learn a little bit every day, pour ne pas mourir idiote. The more you learn, you more there is to discover, the old cliché. The immensity of the task both a condemnation and the ultimate fun.