This is Mission Bay

October 1, 2000

This is the view from the balcony of 17^th floor suite at the Hyatt Islandia Hotel.
The basin is filled with marinas for fishing and pleasure boats. The docks in the foreground belong to the hotel. Presumably, you can rent a slip at the dock and have access to all of the hotel facilities. Mid-channel near the right-center of the picture is a live bait dock. The sea birds and California sea lions found this an attractive venue for their antics.

When they thought the "coast was clear," the sea lions would jump up on the end of the dock and bark and bark, boasting their accomplishment. Very soon we'd see the baitman stalking from the little house at the far end of the dock to shoo the playful animals off his dock. The dock is made of a series of wire cages that held the live bait. The dock decking is actually the lids of these bait cages. When a fishing boat comes along side and moores itself to the dock, the lid of the nearby cage is opened and the bait is seined and dumped into the bait tanks of the fishing boat.

Sea Lions are huge, and very heavy. Their playing on the lids of the bait cages probably doesn't enhance their longivity. When we'd hear them barking in the night we could go out on the balcony and see the baitman with his flashlight going after the sea lions.

Owen Tyler relaxes on the balcony.