The Northern Elephant Seal

On a recent visit to California's Central Coast I had the great fortune of observing the Northern Elephant Seals at the Piedras Blanca Rookery near Cambria on US 1 at the southern end of Big Sur. The vista point at the rookery offers plenty of parking and there were over a hundred cars in the lot on the weekday I was there.

These amazing mammals are only on shore for about three months a year from December to February. During their beach vacation they are busy giving birth, mating and molting but not necessarily in that order. As far as I could tell all these acts were happening at once all over the beach. Very often there are thousands of the seals on the beach at any one time. Not so surprisingly I guess, the peak of the mating season is around Valentine's Day.

60-80 pound pups that were born just hours or maybe minutes before, were positioned within inches or less of a huge blubbery male with it's pendulous nose pursuing a female who may or may not have been it's new mother. Meanwhile the pursuee was tossing sand in the air haphazardly for no apparent reason. Just playing hard to get I suppose. The sand was a noisy scene of grunting, howling, snorting and other indescribable sounds and calls that didn't cease at any point for even a second. Males were fighting one another for dominance and desperate mothers searched the sand for their pup in hopes of nursing. Their milk is as rich as that of any mammal.

The rookery reminded me of spending the day at Ft. Lauderdale beach on the fourth of July in 1976. That was another incredible scene with the beach packed just as tightly and the sounds and goals of the beach goers eerily similar.

These seals were hunted to near extinction around the 1880's, as the oil from their blubber was prized almost as much as that of the whale. A few (20-100) living on the Guadalupe Islands survived and eventually flourished again after becoming protected. Today there may be over 200,000 swimming freely.

The rocks offshore at the rookery of Piedra Blancas offer protection for the seals from breaking waves. This feature allows the females to teach the weaned pups to swim safely. The seals fast while on shore often losing as much as one third of their body weight during that time. When back at sea they dive 1000 to 2000 feet and some have been recorded to dive to depths of 5,000 feet. The dives last for around twenty minutes and the time they spend back at the surface is only two to four minutes. After three months of socializing on the beach the seals go their seperate ways and are solitary while at sea where some will travel thousands of miles in search of food. The males forage on skates, rays, small sharks and other high protein sources. Females eat primarily squid.

While most rookeries are on islands, there is another on the California coast at Ano Nuevo north of Santa Cruz.

The Northern Elephant Seal is sexually dimorphic as the males are much larger than the females. Females grow nine to twelve feet long and weight 900 - 1,800 pounds. A full grown male will grow to sixteen feet in length and weigh in at a whopping 3,000 - 5,000 pounds. This is just one of the reasons that as I learn more about these creatures, all I can say is wow. The seals life span averages fourteen years.

"Friends of the Elephant Seal", a non profit organization help draw attention to this wonderful phenomenon and care for the grounds around the rookery. They can be found on line or at P.O. Box 490, Cambria, CA 93428.