“It’s raining.” My husband, Mike, stated matter-of-factly, as we stepped outside our front door on Sunday morning. As the annual Ano Nuevo hike to see the breeding grounds of the Northern Elephant Seals is one of the most eagerly anticipated events of the hiking yogi’s calendar, I doubted whether the inclement weather would have deterred hike organizer, Tim Custis.
I was right. When Mike and I arrived at YIY it was threatening rain, but Tim stood stoically waiting outside, appropriately dressed for wet weather and seal watching, along with three other hiking yogis, Leslie, Todd and Richard.
When we arrived at Ano Nuevo State Reserve, 55 miles south of San Francisco, an hour and a half later, after driving down 92 through sheeting rain, we were informed brusquely by the ranger at the entry to the parking lot that we were late.
The rangers in the barn where we were to collect our tickets were more understanding. Our guided walk was simply put back 30 minutes. We met up with two more hiking yogis at the barn, Sue and Lee had come from Half Moon Bay. As it turned out, the fully booked walk, 20 people in total, ended up being just 8 die-hard hiking yogis. We headed out to met our guide, 20 minutes down the track. As we set out the rain began to pour down.
A side note: I too had come equipped with a hooded jacket, but discovered, on reaching the Ano Nuevo parking lot, that the zipper on my jacket was broken. Not wanting to chance a soaking, I picked up a cheap disposable rain poncho at the ranger’s barn. As a consequence I spent the rest of the hike looking like a giant, yellow, walking garbage bag.
It was one of the first walks of the elephant seal breeding season. In December the first males arrive at Ano Nuevo, in all their splendour, 14-16 feet long, weighing in at up to 2.5 tons. They need as much body weight as they can get, as for the next three months of the breeding season, they will be fasting. The beaches become the scene of many battles for dominance, and the seasoned alpha males, with chest armour, scar-tissue from many fights, will the fortunate ones who get to father the next generation of pups.
In late December the females arrive and form “harems”. They are smaller than the males: 10-12 feet long and weigh 1,200-2000 pounds. The females need a buffer of body weight, as they too will not eat throughout the breeding season, and in addition to this, they are nursing pups. The mother seal milk is 55% fat and the nursing pups grow from their birth weight of 75 pounds to 250-350 pounds in less than a month. Some pups cheat the system by nursing from more than one mother seal. These are known as “super weaners” and can reach 600 pounds in the same time.
We were told by the rangers and our docent naturalist guide, the cheery Katherine Simmonds, that it was in fact a good thing to be doing the walk in the wet as the elephant seals, normally sluggish on land for the most part, would be more active in the rain. True enough, we came across a beach where there was a rookery. The alpha male decidedly inactive, lying next to a female with a two day old pup, was not the only male on the beach. Two “teenage” males staged a fight in the background. A passing ranger informed us that the fight for dominance was a little like a fourteen year old driving – “it’s something they want to do, technically they’re able to, but they’re just not allowed, they’re not ready.”
A little later a “yearling” came humping up the beach in the direction of the nursing mother. On observing the alpha male, the yearling maintained its distance.
In the surf an adult male elephant seal with tell-tale nose rose out of the waves. Further out into the water, we spotted another marine mammal: a sea otter, floating nonchalantly on its back, riding the waves. The otters eat in this position, holding shellfish on their abdomens, which they break into using tools, such as rocks they collect. The whole time we were by the coastline we could hear the signature calls of the male elephant seals. The call of the males sounds like the fruitiest burp you could imagine. They are able to project the noise using their unusually shaped noses.
The female elephant seals mate about 25 days after giving birth to their young from the previous year’s breeding season. After a gestation period of 7 months, they give birth on land within days after arriving from their sea journey. Most of the adult seals are back at sea by mid-March, the pups are weaned by desertion. In 4-6 weeks the weaners have a new coat and learn to swim. In the last weeks of April they head to sea northwestward.
Elephant seals can fall prey to killer whales and sharks. The larger they get, the more likely they are to see another season. While at sea, the seal is solitary.
Observing the rookeries from above, and at a safe distance, the giant shapes lolling about on the beach resembled big, brown boulders. Not much to see, at least not usually, during fine days, when the seals conserve body temperature by the odd slop of sand with a fin over their expansive bodies. In the rain the seals were more active. Maybe they knew that the sort of person to trudge through mud and precipitation, was the sort of person genuinely concerned about preserving the natural habitat of the seals, the sort of person who really wanted to see the elephant seal thriving in its environment. Maybe they thought these spectators were worth putting on a show for…or maybe…maybe they just like cold, wet weather – after all they have come from Alaska.
by Eleanor Pearson
