senoritafish | (no subject)

After school a Friday or two ago, Angus announced he wanted to go see some sea lions - I'd mentioned I'd seen they were taking over the Fish Harbor dock in front of the Army Corp of Engineers trailers. I figured it would be a way to work in a few more waymarks as well.

War is chaos. This is the WWII Pacific Submarine Memorial West. Turbine end of a torpedo, a great causer of chaos.

Torpedo
Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station
Seal Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
16 April 2010

There are 54 plaques here, one for each submarine lost during WWII, mostly in 1944-45, plus two that were lost during the Cold War. This accounts for ~3000 lives, although not all of them were lost with all hands (some were scuttled or bombed in shipyards).

And if you're into Waymarking, each of these plaques counts as a seperate waymark. It seems like one for the whole memorial would have been enough, but the person who listed them adds the history from each sub, which is helpful and a way to learn a bit more about each one, and what happened to it. I miss that the Navy doesn't seem to name vessels after fish anymore. Since I work with Highly Migratory Species, I had to document a few of the subs named after them.

The little reflecting pool was empty (I notice many fountains are lately) and full of pine needles. Next to it was an extremely patriotic drinking fountain, with very low water pressure.

Then to Terminal Island to see the sea lions - I didn't really take any pictures there as they were too far away to really make good ones (with my present camera lens, anyway). But there must have been at least of couple of dozen of them, nearly sinking the dock. Angus got a big charge out of them bellowing at each other, mostly because one wanted to change position and trod on a big male's tail.

Afterwards, we stopped by the Starbucks on Gaffey St., got some hot chocolate, and went to Pt. Fermin Park. The last time we'd come over here, there was some sort of paid admission fair going on and I couldn't show them the lighthouse as I'd planned. Tried to lift some anchor chain, watched the sunset, had a chat with the people who take care of the feral cats, and walked around the lighthouse - which Avalon wasn't really interested in, she wanted to play on the equipment. Then, time to go home.