Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Somewhere in the world is an elephant seal named Rustin

Yesterday I promised to tell you why I was sorry I didn't have my camera in hand the whole day when we were visiting the Central Coast. While my wife, Victoria, and I were scouting a location to photograph the sunset, we saw a team from The Marine Mammal Center of California headed down the bluffs to the shore. We followed and saw what they were after: a stranded Elephant Seal pup. They carefully loaded the 100+ pound baby into a crate, and then asked for my help to get it back up the cliff. Afterwards, they asked us to help think up an unusual name for it because they track thier rescues by name (not number) but cannot reuse a name for ten years. My wife suggested "Rustin". The folks from TMMC were kind enough to take a picture of us with Rustin and sent us an update on his condition later that evening. You can track his progress at thier website under the Current Patients link.


Here are the other pictures from Saturday. I took these earlier in the day when we stopped on the beach in San Simeon, CA to see the Elephant Seals. I wish I could have gotten a better angle and had better light but I am pleased with the results. All of these images were taken with my Canon 40D and 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens with the Canon EF 1.4x II Extender attached.


This is what baby Rustin will look like one day


Here are some other great shots of the Elephant Seals




4 comments:

Unknown said...

Aw...I love that there is another Rustin in the world. And your wonderful shots only make me miss YOU more.

Deb said...

Great photos. Love the second to last one.

Carl Walters said...

Great pics and well done on your choice of camera. The 5D is great, and from the look of your images you're doing great things with it already.

Regards, carl

LuckyRedHen said...

You've captured these weird looking creatures marvelously!

Blog Archive