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La Jolla sea caves

32.8495° N
117.2691° W

0.0 - 1.0 m

Nov. 8, 1887

hand-collected

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Ernest Merritt

Charlotte Seid

dry

dry

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Based on transcripts of the 1887 diary of Ernest Merritt (1865-1948), provided by Peter Merritt Waser. Diary entry dated 1887-11-12 (Saturday) refers to collecting of abalone on a preceding Tuesday, inferred by Charlotte Seid to be 1887-11-08 but could have been a preceding week. Locality inferred to be La Jolla sea caves based on description; depth inferred to be intertidal; approximate coordinates georeferenced by C. Seid. "Nov 12 ‘87: ...The second week of Harry’s visit we took a three day’s yachting trip up to La Jolla and down to the Coronado Islands. We hired a nice little yacht – two masts and a little cabin with four berths – for six dollars a day. The owner – Capt. Woody – with one man to help him did the sailing. We started Monday evening at about six and reached La Jolla at nine or ten o’clock the next morning, sailing all night with a light wind. ... La Jolla is a very pretty place. That is the rocks and caves along the water are pretty. They have laid out a town a short distance back from the shore which I didn’t investigate. It has several houses already and a hotel. We took a small boat and rowed along right close under the rocks, or rather “Billy” rowed us. The water was perfectly clear, and we could see the mosses and shells on the bottom and the gold-fish swimming around underneath us. It was the most beautiful aquarium imaginable. We landed at the mouth of one of the caves. It was nearly low water so we could walk way into it. In the little pools of water in the rocks there were hundreds of sea anemones of all sorts of different colors and designs, and thousands of crabs and shellfish....We found some half a dozen abalones in the cave. I was rather surprised to get them, for they say that abalones are getting very scarce. In the afternoon we tied up to a bed of kelp a short distance off shore and fished for “bottom fish”, using the meat of the abalones for bait."