Sea Otter in Chihuly Waves

From the shore it sounds like someone crunching corn nuts into a megaphone. Or sometimes, it’s an anvil hitting a cement wall.

If you look out over the swells of Monterey Bay, you’ll see kelp floats, hundreds, sometimes thousands of them. The rounded baldies look a lot like sea otter heads … and some of them are, but it’s hard to tell. Is it a float just bobbing in the surf? Or is it animated, diving into the crest of a wave? Can you zero in on the crunch and boom of cracking sea snails and mussels?

As those waves tumble over otters eating snails and mussels and urchins, the otters just keep crunching. They ride the lower crests, or clutch their prey and dive into the taller swells, then pop up on the other side like ping pong balls, mid-bite. The waves break over them and freeze as sculptures, like Chihuly glass.