Animal Planet, or something...

For a good part of this summer M and I have been getting up very early... when I say very early, I mean sometimes before six am. We've been riding bicycles, exercising, swimming.

One day a few weeks ago while riding our bikes north on the AP board walk we spied some whales (though I'm not sure what kind). There were at least two, possibly a mama and her baby, breaching and shooting spray. It was pretty awesome. In fact, it was something I'd never seen with my own eyes off our little part of the Atlantic Ocean. In Hawaii and Mexico, yes. But not off our piece of the coast. Of course I clapped and giggled like a little kid.

In the past couple of weeks we've also seen some cool looking fish with black & white stripes. I thought maybe they were Zebra Fish, but I'm not certain since I'm pretty sure they only live in the tropics. The water in NJ has been warm but far from tropical (especially this week when it dropped back into the low sixties).



I saw some kind of ray - sting ray or skate - while I was surfing. It was quite big but not threatening in any way - just kind of hanging out near the bottom swimming around.



And then there were the dolphins swimming not far from us the other morning.



We've also had Salps... They look like fish eggs but they're not. Sometimes it's a little bit gross to swim amongst them b/c it's like swimming in pulpy orange juice but apparently they do good things for the ocean so I've made my peace with the little pieces.



It's been super cool to see all the sea creatures - if only the water in NJ were as clear as where ever these photos were taken. I mean, we can see to the bottom but our water is more greenish in color and definitely never as warm. Still, it's been a good summer so far with one exception... lack of surf. It's really rather sad and I'm ready to ride waves larger than two feet on a board shorter than seven.

*sigh*