Big Sur Recreation & Parks
Keeping up a family tradition
Monarch Butterflies migrate up and down the US and can travel upto 3000 miles on their yearly treks. Every year the monarch butterfly makes a very long two way trip between roosts. They are the on
ly tropical butterflies to make such long journeys. The Monarchs travel further than many birds and whales, hardly what anyone would ever suspect such small creatures to do. The butterflys can be seen flying in masses and amazingly enough they return to the same place, sometimes even the same trees as the previous year. Whats really fascinating is that the following years migration is not made by the same butterflies as the year before, it is made by their offsprings, the grandchildren. The butterflys only make the journey once in thier short life and their grandchildren return the following fall to the same location as their grandparents having never been their before. HD images of Butterflies and desktop HD wallpaper For more wildlife info for Big Sur California, Big Sur Chamber of Commerce Monarch Butterflies roost at Andrew Molera State Park Big Sur big sur monarch
Whale Watching off the coast of Big Sur
The blue whale is the largest mammal on the planet with the largest reaching over 100 feet. The avarage adult blue whale is 70 to 90 feet and weighs between 100 to 150 tons. During the whales feeding seasons, the whales consume one to two tons of krill daily.
At the turn of the 1900's, blue whales were abundant and found in most of the worlds oceans. The whaling industry of the early and mid part of that century almost annihilated the species. Today, there are fewer than 10,00 blue whales in existence. Records from the 1930's show almost 30,000 whales killed in one year alone, that's 3 times today's population. One also wonders what the actual "unrecorded" numbers may have been. By 1966, Blue whales were so scarce that they put them on the endangered species list, where they remain today.
Blue whales have a long gestational cycle and a calf has to survive 10 years to even reach sexual maturity. Their long growth period from calf to adult coupled with environmental and whaling issues has kept their numbers very slim and fighting for their species survival.
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