Elephant Seals At Ano Nuevo State Park

 Today at 10:00 AM, we arrived on time for the equal access tour of the elephant seals at Ano Nuevo State Park. Equal access just means that instead of doing the 3 mile loop of walking, we would have a van drive us close to the boardwalk, and then we walk on the boardwalk and observe the elephant seals.



 The volunteer guide in the van was a seasoned amazing story teller. Every word that falls off his lips is dense in information and insights. The elephant seals have one hell of a turbulent raw story to tell behind their sleepy exterior. The alpha male maintains a harem of females. Rest of the males do not ever get a chance, and even the alpha males have a very short intense period where it can go with twenty five plus females or so, and then he is done as well. 

     These sleepy looking elephant seals swim for seven thousand miles or so,  on a feeding frenzy while in the water. This is to put on weight and give himself a better chance at being the alpha male. Then, once established, the alpha male loses about two thirds of it's body weight as it does not eat or drink while it is at the shore. The reason it does not eat or drink is so that it never loses sight of the females in it's harem, and can chase away any non-alpha males that try to give it a shot. This we saw first hand. 



    There was a female elephant seal relaxing at the beach. A male came over to it and started to play with the female. The bigger alpha male noticed this and chased the other male off. The second male moved as fast as it could and escaped into the sea. 

     Now, from the females' perspective, when these females come into the shore, they are all pregnant.  Few weeks after coming into the shore, they all give birth to puppies. From the land's perspective, isn't that a lot of drama? The kid immediately establishes unique sound signals and smell signals with the mom. Then these kids drink out the milk from the mother leaving the mother to one third of it's original body weight after intense gestation. And then the mother gets intense and leaves the kids. The kids now have to figure out what to eat, and if they don't figure out, they die. Only about forty percent of the children survive. 

Kiosk seal
Typically the seals stay close enough to the water.  However, there was the story of one seal that made it all the way to the kiosk which is all the way back to the starting point of our van drive which took about fifteen minutes or so. Rangers do not typically interfere with nature. The rule is that if something caused by mankind can hurt the seal, then you can interfere. The kiosk is pretty close to the highway which is manmade. So the conservation agency was called, and they shooed the seal into a portion where the "losers" were hanging around and then a harem formed there. 

Toilet seat seal 

A seal played in the water and got a toilet seat trapped around it's neck, and then it brew big in size and finally humans intervened and operated the seat out it's neck leaving a scar on the neck. Not only did the seal survive, it came back four years later establishing it's own harem. 

So, we enjoyed the wonderful conversations from these rangers. And had a great time observing the behaviors of these once considered extinct mammals.

Lightkeeper's house island
There was an abandoned island that we could see from the board walk. This is where light house keeper used to stay couple of hundred years back. Then it got abandoned and sea gulls and elephant seals and pelicans et al reclaimed the island from man. After the van tour, we went back and saw a live camera view of the island. 

Twenty minute educational cinema
We also saw a twenty minute documentary on how the elephant seals got close to extinction, and came back. And the story about their stark lifestyle. 

By now, it was lunch time. With parents with us, I did not want to delay, and luckily we found a beer and food place. I checked out the place and was told that kids could come in as well. They even had butter chicken in the menu, live music that was going on in the bar - sounded like a struggling artist but live music never the less, add to that direct ocean view and the playful waves. 

This also allowed us to hang around by the beach and explore a few more spots near by - the pigeon point light house,  whaler's cove, pescadaro beach. 


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