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Northern Elephant Seal
The northern elephant seal (''Mirounga angustirostris'') is one of two species of elephant seal (the other is the southern elephant seal). It is a member of the family Phocidae (true seals). Elephant seals derive their name from their great size and from the male's large proboscis, which is used in making extraordinarily loud roaring noises, especially during the mating competition. Sexual dimorphism in size is great. Correspondingly, the mating system is highly polygynous; a successful male is able to impregnate up to 50 females in one season. Description The huge male northern elephant seal typically weighs and measures , although some males can weigh up to . Females are much smaller and can range from in weight, or roughly a third of the male's bulk, and measure from . The bull southern elephant seals are, on average, larger than those in the northern species, but the females in both are around the same size, indicating the even higher level of sexual dimorphism in the so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the '' Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in 2009 by the International Union of Geological Sciences, the cutoff of the Pleistocene and the preceding Pliocene was regarded as being 1.806 million years Before Present (BP). Publications from earlier years may use either definition of the period. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of the Paleolithic age used in archaeology. The name is a combination of Ancient Greek grc, label=none, πλεῖστος, pleīstos, most and grc, label=none, καινός, kainós (latinized as ), 'new'. At the end of the preceding Pliocene, the previously isolated North and South American continents were joined by the Isthmus of Panama, causing a faunal interchange between the t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Channel Islands Of California
The Channel Islands () are an eight-island archipelago located within the Southern California Bight in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California. The four Northern Channel Islands are part of the Transverse Ranges geologic province, and the four Southern Channel Islands are part of the Peninsular Ranges province. Five of the islands are within the Channel Islands National Park, and the waters surrounding these islands make up Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. The Nature Conservancy was instrumental in establishing the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. The islands were inhabited as early as 13,000 years ago, the earliest paleontological evidence of humans in North America. They are the easternmost islands in the Pacific Island group. The Chumash and Tongva Native Americans who lived later on the islands may be the descendants of the original inhabitants, but they were then displaced by Spaniards who used the islands for fishing and agriculture. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 6852 islands covering ; the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto. Japan is the eleventh most populous country in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated and urbanized. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its population of 123.2 million on narrow coastal plains. Japan is divided into 47 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions. The Greater Tokyo Ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mariana Islands
The Mariana Islands (; also the Marianas; in Chamorro language, Chamorro: ''Manislan Mariånas'') are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen longitudinally oriented, mostly Volcano#Dormant and reactivated, dormant volcanic mountains in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, between the 12th parallel north, 12th and 21st parallel north, 21st parallels north and along the 145th meridian east. They lie south-southeast of Japan, west-southwest of Hawaii, north of New Guinea and east of the Philippines, demarcating the Philippine Sea's eastern limit. They are found in the northern part of the western Oceania, Oceanic sub-region of Micronesia, and are politically divided into two jurisdictions of the United States: the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and, at the southern end of the chain, the territory of Guam. The islands were named after the influential Spanish queen Mariana of Austria following their colonization in the 17th century. The indigenous inh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vagrancy (biology)
Vagrancy is a phenomenon in biology whereby an individual animal (usually a bird) appears well outside its normal range; they are known as vagrants. The term accidental is sometimes also used. There are a number of poorly understood factors which might cause an animal to become a vagrant, including internal causes such as navigatory errors (endogenous vagrancy) and external causes such as severe weather (exogenous vagrancy). Vagrancy events may lead to colonisation and eventually to speciation. Birds In the Northern Hemisphere, adult birds (possibly inexperienced younger adults) of many species are known to continue past their normal breeding range during their spring migration and end up in areas further north (such birds are termed spring overshoots). In autumn, some young birds, instead of heading to their usual wintering grounds, take "incorrect" courses and migrate through areas which are not on their normal migration path. For example, Siberian passerines which normal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state geographically located within the tropics. Hawaii comprises nearly the entire Hawaiian archipelago, 137 volcanic islands spanning that are physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. The state's ocean coastline is consequently the fourth-longest in the U.S., at about . The eight main islands, from northwest to southeast, are Niihau, Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lānai, Kahoolawe, Maui, and Hawaii—the last of these, after which the state is named, is often called the "Big Island" or "Hawaii Island" to avoid confusion with the state or archipelago. The uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands make up most of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, the United States' largest prot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Race Rocks Marine Protected Area
Race Rocks Ecological Reserve is a BC Parks ecological reserve off the southern tip of Vancouver Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Metchosin, British Columbia, Canada. Description Located at a narrow part of the Strait, the area covers of ocean, rocks, and reefs, but does not include the small envelope of land with the foghorn and the historic Race Rocks Lighthouse itself. That area is leased by the Canadian Coast Guard. Because of the location in a high tidal current area, there is an exceptional variety of marine life to be found, including marine mammals, sea birds, fish, marine invertebrates, and marine algae and sea grass. It is a haulout area for California and Northern sealions and a birthing rookery for Harbour seals and it is also the most northerly birthing colony on the Pacific Coast of North America for the elephant seal, ''Mirounga angustirostris''. History The idea of protecting Race Rocks came about following a marine science project by the students of Pea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Arago State Park
Cape Arago State Park is a state park in the U.S. state of Oregon, administered by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. Cape Arago is north of Bandon and 15 miles southwest of Coos Bay on Cape Arago Highway in Coos County. History In 1579, Sir Francis Drake is purported to have sought shelter for his ship, the ''Golden Hind'', around Cape Arago."History of Coos Bay" . City of Coos Bay. Accessed September 2010. The headland was originally named Cape Gregory by James Cook on March 12, 1778 after , the saint of that day; it was renamed Cape Arago after |
Castle Rock National Wildlife Refuge
Castle Rock National Wildlife Refuge is offshore from Crescent City in northern California. This coastal rock covers approximately , and rises steeply above sea level. The refuge provides an important sanctuary for the Aleutian cackling goose and nesting seabirds. History Tolowa people foraged on, but did not live on the island, their village sites were on the headlands near Castle Rock and towards Point St. George where the intertidal zone provided shellfish and seaweed. The Tolowa hunted sea lions from long sea-going canoes at St. George Reef and Castle Rock. They also hunted and ate sea otters, sea lions, whales, harbor and fur seals as well as birds, eggs and juvenile birds with the most common midden bird bones being from immature cormorants. In May, men would collect eggs to be eaten as well as blown empty and used to make decorative garlands. There are no known archaeological sites on the island. White settlement in 1850 was followed by decimation of natives; only a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isla Cedros
Cedros Island (''Isla de Cedros'', "island of cedars" in Spanish) is an island in the Pacific Ocean belonging to the state of Baja California, Mexico. The dry and rocky island had a population of 1,350 in 2005 and has an area of which includes the area of several small nearby islands. Cedros Island is mountainous, reaching a maximum elevation of . The economy is based on commercial fishing and salt production. Cedros has a distinctive flora and the traces of some of the earliest human beings in the New World. The ocean around the island is popular with sport fishermen. There was human presence of the island already about 11,000 years ago. The American Indian inhabitants when the island was first visited by Spanish explorers in the 16th century called it Huamalgua, the "Island of Fogs." The Indian inhabitants have been given the name Huamalgueños by modern day scholars. They were relocated to the mainland of Baja California by Jesuit missionaries in 1732 and ceased to exist a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isla Guadalupe
Guadalupe Island ( es, Isla Guadalupe, link=no) is a volcanic island located off the western coast of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula and about southwest of the city of Ensenada in the state of Baja California, in the Pacific Ocean. The various volcanoes are extinct or dormant. In 2005 Guadalupe Island and its surrounding waters and islets were declared a biosphere reserve to restore its vegetation (decimated by feral goats) and to protect its population of marine mammals and birds. The island is a popular destination for great white shark cage diving. Guadalupe Island is inhabited only by scientists, military personnel operating a weather station, and a small group of seasonal fishermen. The island is mostly arid and has very little surface water. The two other Mexican island groups in the Pacific Ocean that are not on the continental shelf are the Revillagigedo Islands and Rocas Alijos. Guadalupe Island and its islets are the westernmost region of Mexico. Discovery ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Farallon Islands
The Farallon Islands, or Farallones (from the Spanish ''farallón'' meaning "pillar" or "sea cliff"), are a group of islands and sea stacks in the Gulf of the Farallones, off the coast of San Francisco, California, United States. The islands are also sometimes referred to by mariners as the Devil's Teeth Islands, in reference to the many treacherous underwater shoals in their vicinity.Devils Teeth, Mysterious Sharks Shark Stewards. By David McGuire. Sept. 15, 2014. Downloaded July 8, 2017. The islands lie outside the and south of , a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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