Brown pelican, juvenile with blue and gray identification bands on its legs. These tags aid scientists in understanding how the birds travel and recover if they have been rehabilitated. This large seabird has a wingspan over 7 feet wide. The California race of the brown pelican holds endangered species status, due largely to predation in the early 1900s and to decades of poor reproduction caused by DDT poisoning.
Species: Brown Pelican, Pelecanus occidentalis, Pelecanus occidentalis californicus
Location: La Jolla, California
Image ID: 23631
A great white shark is countershaded, with a dark gray dorsal color and light gray to white underside, making it more difficult for the shark's prey to see it as approaches from above or below in the water column. The particular undulations of the countershading line along its side, where gray meets white, is unique to each shark and helps researchers to identify individual sharks in capture-recapture studies. Guadalupe Island is host to a relatively large population of great white sharks who, through a history of video and photographs showing their countershading lines, are the subject of an ongoing study of shark behaviour, migration and population size.
Species: Great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias
Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico
Image ID: 19468
The Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River drops 308 feet at the head of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. A long exposure blurs the fast-flowing water. The canyon is approximately 10,000 years old, 20 miles long, 1000 ft deep, and 2500 ft wide. Its yellow, orange and red-colored walls are due to oxidation of the various iron compounds in the soil, and to a lesser degree, sulfur content.
Location: Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Image ID: 13338
Lip throws out, boogie board guy about to take off at the The Wedge. Actually at Cylinders.
Location: The Wedge, Newport Beach, California
Image ID: 14189
Surfer nearly collides with stray board, #3 of a 6 frame sequence, Newport Beach.
Location: Newport Beach, California
Image ID: 16835
Upper Yosemite Falls and lunar rainbow, moonbow. A lunar rainbow (moonbow) can be seen to the left of Yosemite Falls, where the moon illuminates the spray of the falls.
Location: Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park, California
Image ID: 27752