8/15 - Around Newport

This was a nice, calm and fun day.  However, calm does not apply to grocery shopping this morning in a store which had overcrowded aisles and a really strange and inconvenient way of organizing stock. We will be very happy to get back to our Ingles when we get home.....definitely our favorite of all the many grocery stores we've been to across the country.

After lunch we made it to the Hatfield Marine Sciences Center in time for the octopus feeding. The center belongs to Oregon State University and is set up for both research and educating the public on all marine subjects. It's well done and very interesting. 

Olson, the Giant Pacific Octopus

The big deal about the octopus feeding is that it gets the octopus out where she can be seen.  Her name is Olson, named after Dr. Bob Olson, a renowned fish pathologist with OSU.  Without something like meal time to entice her she would stay in her cave in the back of the tank with little showing but maybe a few suckers.  Octopuses are naturally shy and retiring so what she's being asked to do is very much against her nature. The center keeps wild-caught octopuses for only six months, and then only after they are acclimated to the display tank and are found to be temperamentally suited to being a display animal. If they can't handle it they're quickly returned to the ocean.

Olson put on a great display during feeding. It's too bad the "Please No Flash" sign was right in front of her.  Octopuses have a great ability to change colors in an instant, so her color here is quite different from the first picture. The paler her color the more relaxed and content she is. The person doing the feeding was watering her with a watering can which is something she enjoys so much she sometimes even prefers it to being fed. She spreads her arms around at the surface so she can feel the water being sprinkled.

Olson preparing to have her arms watered.

The center will keep her on display for about six months, or until she gets too big for the tank or indicates she isn't doing well with all the attention. When she is released she will shoot off into the water without a backwards glance to the people who have so lovingly cared for her.

The Giant Pacific Octopus is the largest of the more than 100 known species of octopus. The biggest one on record was 600 pounds with an arm span of 32 feet, found off the coast of Alaska where it evidently had an unlimited supply of crabs (its favorite food). The normal size is around 110 pounds with a 20 foot arm span. Any size octopus can pull its entire body through a space slightly bigger than its beak, the only hard part of an octopus's body. They live from 3 to 5 years which is long-lived compared to other octopus species.

Ever since we got here we've been hearing non-stop barking that sounded like a cross between a bloodhound and a donkey. We suspected it was sea lions but we'd walked over to the edge of the bay and couldn't figure out where it was coming from. We finally found out at the marine center. The noise is indeed coming from California sea lions which are on the Newport side of the bay. We got directions and went to see them.

The barkers are a large group of sea lions who spend much of their year here in Newport. These sea lion platforms have been built for them so they can haul out in front of the tourists and patrons at the restaurant next to the dock. They are all males, adults and juveniles, who come north for around nine months a year and leave the females and young pups at home in California.  The females never leave California. It's their chance to be rid of the noisy, bickering males for a while.

The barking goes on constantly as animals get pushed off the platforms and others try to get on.  There didn't seem to be any serious biting going on, just a lot growling and posturing.  They were very amusing to watch.  Now when we hear them we'll know exactly what's going on. We hear them when we take Lovie for her last walk of the day between 10:30 and 11:00 so apparently they keep going around the clock.

We had been entertaining an idea of eating out, but after finding out how narrow Newport's streets were and how difficult the parking situation was, we elected to stay home and eat the salmon we got today. It was a good decision because the salmon Jim fixed could not have been any better.

After visiting the barking sea lions we went over to Yaquina Bay State Park which is on the ocean side of the bridge and opposite the marina and RV park. The fog had been out past the breakers all day until late afternoon, just about the time we got over to the beach side for a view of the ocean. We could just barely see the breakers and the wind was doing its usual thing so we didn't stay long.

We'll decide what to do tomorrow when we see the weather forecast in the morning.