Some 20 miles north of Fort Ord, visitors to the Central Coast can experience a whole other side of Monterey Bay nature in Elkhorn Slough.
“Right now, we’re seeing tons of big sea lions and brown pelicans,” said Marina Maze, a captain with Monterey Bay Ecotours.
Plus, spring is harbor seal pupping season, and the slough is a great place to see mothers swimming with their pups, she said. And then, of course, there’s the otters. Elkhorn Slough hosts one of the biggest resident populations of sea otters in the United States. Sightings are so reliable that the company boasts a sea-otters-or-bust money-back guarantee.
Monterey Bay Eco Tours was the brainchild of boat captain and nature lover Wendy Kitchell. As a teenager working in Key West, Kitchell watched her favorite coral reef suffer the consequences of pollution and over-tourism.
“I remember the shocking day it was just broken rubble, bleached-out coral pieces,” she said. “I was like ‘Oh my god, we killed this reef.’ ”
After moving to California to be close to family, Kitchell teamed up with her brother, a master boat builder who specializes in extremely light and strong boats using specialized materials — light enough to be powered entirely by electricity. The goal: a boat that could help visitors explore this corner of the natural world without slowly destroying it.
Kitchell’s electric boat isn’t just low emissions; it’s also remarkably quiet.