The Elephant Seals of Piedras Blancas

Not all stories about animals threatened with extinction end sadly. I’d like to share with you an animal comeback success story.

Before the advent of kerosene, seals were hunted as ruthlessly as whales, and for the same reason. Oil. Both seal and whale oil were in great demand for lighting up people’s homes at night.

One seal in particular was prized, the elephant seal. They are really big animals. The male can weigh up to two and a half tons. Due to its great size and thick blubber, an elephant seal could render an immense quantity of oil. Northern elephant seals were hunted relentlessly, until the species was on the brink of extinction. By 1913, only 30  were left, a small herd that spent its onshore time on Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico.

Realizing that extinction was imminent, the Mexican government took steps to protect the last of the elephant seals. Their stringent protection measures were successful. The elephant seals survived. Over time, they even began to thrive.

As the population of elephant seals rose, they began to recolonize some of their former territories, eventually moving north to the waters off the coast of California.

Elephant seals are amazing animals. They spend most of their lives in the deep ocean.  Superbly adapted to their life in the sea,  they spend 90% of their time there underwater. They migrate thousands of miles, swimming up to 60 miles in a day. Elephant seals can dive deeper than any other mammal, including whales. Although most of their dives are 300-600 meters, they can dive down as deep as a mile under the surface of the sea. They can even hold their breath for almost 2 hours without resurfacing.

Although the majority of their time is spent far offshore, elephant seals do need to come to land to breed, birth and molt.

One of the places they have recently returned to is a beach just south of Piedras Blancas Point, at the southern end of the Big Sur coastline.

Elephant seals began to make Piedras Blancas home in the 1990s. At first there were only a couple of dozen seals landing there. In those early days, the local community viewed the return of elephant seals as a bit of a problem. The beach they were landing on was popular with surfers, and there was a concern about the possibility of conflict between the seals and the surfers. There was also a discussion about the seals interfering with traffic on Highway 1.

Sometimes they do actually make it across the highway. Not often, though. They need to be on the beach.

A management plan for the seals was debated. Education, not regulation, was key to the success of the plan. It also required a bit of a compromise. The surfers would have to sacrifice their beach for the good of the seals.

A non-profit organization, Friends of the Elephant Seals, trained docents to staff the area and educate visitors when the seals were active. A small fence was built to keep the seals off the highway and discourage people from approaching too closely.

The plan was a success. The elephant seal population increased exponentially, growing from that two dozen in the early 1990s to 17,000 in 2018.

Piedras Blancas is now one of the biggest seal rookeries in California, hosting about 10% of the entire world population of Northern Elephant Seals.

The numbers are still increasing. Here at Piedras Blancas, about five thousand babies are born a year.

Since their numbers are increasing, though, the beaches they already inhabit may not be enough. During the recent government shutdown, the elephant seals at Point Reyes National Seashore took over Drake’s Beach, formerly a favorite of the park’s human visitors. Like the earlier debate at Piedras Blancas, officials are not quite sure what to do about it but are leaning toward education and giving it back to the seals. Do you really want to argue with a two and a half ton bull elephant seal, and all his friends and relations?

The gargantuan bull elephant seals just may  be the ugliest animals on Earth. Sometimes they look rather comical. This must be where Sesame Street’s Snuffleupagus came from. Other times, well, they’re just plain ugly. At least four, sometimes up to ten times the size of the females, these behemoths look like they belong to a completely different species.

Males fight for territory and breeding rights. Although the fighting can get ugly, usually vocalizations and posturing will cause one of the two combatants to back down.

Mating is often, although not always, brutal. Females usually resist, trying to move away and screaming loudly, flinging sand into the bull’s face. They are bit and clobbered and violently restrained by the males. Sometimes babies are crushed by the ardent bulls pursuing their mothers and die later from internal injuries. Imagine a human getting run over by a truck. It’s kind of like that, a hundred pound pup squashed under an oblivious two ton bull.

Hostility and aggression are not confined to the males. The females fight often among themselves, too.  As I watched one cow and her pup argue, I thought, “Is that any way to treat your poor little newborn baby?” Anthropomorphisizing, I know!  Elephant seals seem like such an ill-tempered race.  Their time on land must be incredibly stressful.

Maybe they just need a Snickers bar. During their time ashore, elephant seals neither eat nor drink. Males may stay on the beach up to 100 days.

Females will only spend 4-6 weeks at a time on land, but nursing a pup will take its toll. Mothers lose two pounds for every pound a pup gains. They will lose about a third of their body weight during their time onshore. That and they’re getting randomly raped. It’s enough to make anyone grouchy!

January and February are the best months to watch all the action at the rookery. Births, nursing, mating, fighting for dominance all happen at that time. There’s a lot going on. It’s fascinating to watch.

Observing the elephant seals leaves me with a couple of thoughts to ponder, that I’d like to share with you. Are we going to be OK with giving up a beach every 20 years or so to let another species thrive? Or are we too selfish to allow even that?

The other is a ray of hope. If the elephant seals can come back after being almost completely exterminated by human causes, can we bring some of today’s endangered species, like the Monarch Butterfly, back from the brink? I think we can, if we want it enough. I hope we do.