The Morphy Visit: Days 9-11 - Monterey Bay

Our mission: to inspire conservation of the oceans. So reads the mission of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The statement, prominently displayed in bold print at the entrance to this renowned Aquarium, is simple, clear, and appropriate as the Aquarium sits on the shore of one of California's most biologically diverse and cherished bays.
The Aquarium fulfills its mission too: every visitor leaves with a sense of awe and amazement at the beauty of life under the turbulent surface of the this bay's waters. Our own commitment to keeping fish out of our diets is affirmed whenever we visit the Aquarium and we would not be surprised if many visitors consider vegetarianism after seeing all those sea creatures enjoying life in the seas.
Rai, one of the tough realities of the human world is that not everyone translates an experience of communing with the splendor of nature as a call to preserve nature. Not everyone leaves the Aquarium a vegetarian. For those who leave with filets and shrimp cocktails on their minds, the city of Monterey is the perfect place to be. There is perhaps no better place to enjoy seeing animals thrive in their natural environment before butchering them and consuming them by the plate and bucket-full!
Just steps from the entrance to the Aquarium the bounties of Monterey Bay can be found spilling out restaurant doors and into stands on the sidewalks. It's a veritable dead sealife bonanza! Clam chowder, shrimp bowls, salmon sandwiches and so much more can be enjoyed with views of the Bay. Even Aquarium visitors most inspired to conserve the oceans can hardly resist the smell of buttery seafood or the charming call of fishermen (or someone dressed like a fisherman) promising 'the best chowder on the Bay' along the row of restaurants that is historic Fisherman's Wharf.
We wondered what the Aquarium management was doing to spread their mission beyond the front doors of the Aquarium and found out when we saw the small page of sustainable and unsustainable seafood given to all visitors. A small step.
For thirty years, the city of Monterey grew and prospered around a sardine industry. The sardines were completely wiped out by 1950. Now, as tourists feed on buckets of shrimp at Bubba Gump's, they can rest assured that the ocean will in fact be conserved although it may be a lifeless one.
Rai, now that I've dwelled long enough on that issue, let's recap the other two days we enjoyed with your Canadian family in the Monterey Bay region. We spent 2 great nights at the fabulous Asilomar resort managed as a State Park and visited lovely and historic Carmel with its wooded streets lined with whimsical cottages and seaside mansions. And, just when we thought that people were living large in Carmel-by-the-Sea, we took a drive down scenic 17-mile Drive, a road that winds through several golf communities including Pebble Beach. Many of the homes built along the rocky, cypress covered shores of this peninsula were unbelievable displays of wealth and luxury.
Rai, you're probably thinking now that we're setting some big expectations in just these past two stories. First, we want you to modernize the rail system at Roaring Camp from coal-burning locomotive to magnetic rail and now we're expecting you to have all the seafood restaurants in Monterey shut down. That's right, every generation is charged with undoing the failures of the generation before it. You've got a lot of work ahead of you...