The spotted seal

Sorry My Friend for disturbing you during your well earned siesta!

The spotted seal, also known as the larga or largha seal is considered a "true seal". It inhabits ice floes and waters of the North Pacific Ocean and adjacent seas. It is primarily found along the continental shelf of the Beaufort, Chukchi, Bering and Okhotsk Seas and south to the northern Yellow Sea and it migrates south as far as northern Huanghai and the western Sea of Japan. It is also found in Alaska from the southeastern Bristol Bay to Demarcation Point during the ice-free seasons of summer and autumn when spotted seals mate and have pups. Smaller numbers are found in the Beaufort Sea. It is sometimes mistaken for the harbor seal to which it is closely related and spotted seals and harbor seals often mingle together in areas where their habitats overlap.

The reduction in arctic ice floes due to global warming led to concerns that the spotted seal was threatened with extinction. Studies were conducted on its population numbers, with the conclusion, as of October 15, 2009, that the spotted seal population in Alaskan waters is not currently to be listed as endangered by NOAA.

Thank you Dear Sveta from Khabarovsk who has sent more than a dozen such beautiful cards of the Primorye, which I will be posting from time to time.

Fishing Boats

An extremely pretty card showing fishing boats from a coastal village in Malaysia. Thank you Li Foong for this nice card.

The MGB

This is that famous MG model The MGB. Launched in September 1962 (precisely 50 years ago) the MGB had an unprecedented level of comfort for a sport's car. It became the fastest selling MG of all time. Thank you Riitta for this nice card.

Chinese Junk

A junk is an ancient Chinese sailing vessel design still in use today. Junks may have developed from very early bamboo rafts which had a high stern. Cromagnon cave paintings on the Indo China coast show junk shaped doublehull vessels. Junks were developed during the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) and were used as sea-going vessels as early as the 2nd century AD. They evolved in the later dynasties, and were used throughout Asia for extensive ocean voyages. They were found, and in lesser numbers are still found, throughout South-East Asia and India, but primarily in China, perhaps most famously inHong Kong. Found more broadly today is a growing number of modern recreational junk-rigged sailboats.

The term junk may be used to cover many kinds of boat—ocean-going, cargo-carrying, pleasure boats, live-aboards. They vary greatly in size and there are significant regional variations in the type of rig. To Western eyes, however, they all appear to resemble one another due to their most significant shared feature, their fully battened sails. My friend Iris sent me this wonderful card from Hong Kong. Besides the junk you can see the Victoria Peak on the Hong Kong Island and on the other side the commercial District of Kowloon on the mainland.

The Polar Bear

The polar bear is a bear native largely within the Arctic Circle encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the world's largest land carnivore and also the largest bear, together with the omnivorous Kodiak Bear, which is approximately the same size. A boar (adult male) weighs around 350–680 kg (770–1,500 lb), while a sow (adult female) is about half that size. Although it is closely related to the brown bear, it has evolved to occupy a narrower ecological niche, with many body characteristics adapted for cold temperatures, for moving across snow, ice, and open water, and for hunting the seals which make up most of its diet. Although most polar bears are born on land, they spend most of their time at sea. Their scientific name means "maritime bear", and derives from this fact. Polar bears can hunt their preferred food of seals from the edge of sea ice, often living off fat reserves when no sea ice is present.

The polar bear is classified as a vulnerable species, with eight of the nineteen polar bear subpopulations in decline  For decades, large scale hunting raised international concern for the future of the species but populations rebounded after controls and quotas began to take effect  For thousands of years, the polar bear has been a key figure in the material, spiritual, and cultural life of Arctic indigenous peoples, and polar bears remain important in their cultures. Thank you Xavier (from Montreal) for this lovely card, which shows a Polar Bear mother relaxing with her cubs.

Wind Surfing

Merja sent me this card from Limassol. I wonder where she is in this picture ;-))

Well what exactly is windsurfing? Windsurfing or sailboarding is a surface water sport that combines elements of surfing and sailing. It consists of a board usually 2 to 3 metres long, with a volume of about 60 to 250 liters, powered by wind on a sail. The rig is connected to the board by a free-rotating universal joint and consists of a mast, 2-sided boom and sail. The sail area generally ranges from 2.5 m² to 12 m² depending on the conditions, the skill of the sailor and the type of windsurfing being undertaken.

The history of windsurfing began in 1948 on the Susquehanna River, Pennsylvania, USA when Newman Darby invented the sailboard, which, incidentally, he did not patent. In 1964, Darby began selling his sailboards.

Windsurfing can be said to straddle both the laid-back culture of surf sports and the more rules-based environment of sailing. Although it might be considered a minimalistic version of a sailboat, a windsurfer offers experiences that are outside the scope of any other sailing craft design. Windsurfers can perform jumps, inverted loops, spinning maneuvers, and other "freestyle" moves that cannot be matched by any sailboat. Windsurfers were the first to ride the world's largest waves, such asJaws on the island of Maui, and, with very few exceptions, it was not until the advent of tow-in surfing that waves of that size became accessible to surfers on more traditional surfboards. Extreme waves aside, many expert windsurfers will ride the same waves as wavesurfers do (wind permitting) and are themselves usually very accomplished without a rig on a conventional surfboard.

At one time referred to as "surfing's ginger haired cousin" by the sport's legendary champion, Robby Naish, windsurfing has long struggled to present a coherent image of the sport to outsiders. Indeed, participants will regularly use different names to describe the sport, including sailboarding and boardsailing. Despite the term,"Windsurfing" became the accepted name for the sport, participants are still called "sailors" or "board heads" and not "surfers"

Town Hall of Somero

Somero seems to be the flavour of the season. And Ella takes us to the well planned and nicely decorated Town hall there. What goes on in that august building between elders is anyone's guess. But, whatever the do, they do in wonderful surroundings.
On the wall one can see the Coat of Arms of the City. And, in the fore ground is a statue of the "Settler"or "The Pioneer Farmer".