Seal breeding season

December begins the elephant seal breeding season. Adults and pups are active. The first pup was born overnight on December 15-16, in the rain.

Pups are born on the sand

Seeing a pup born is exciting. Watch for females fussing and tossing a lot of sand. They sometimes toss so much, they build a sort of perch for themselves, with deep ditches dug out on both sides.

Ask a Friends of the Elephant Seal guide. They may be able to direct you to a mother ready to have her pup. Look for the crowd. Everyone is eager to see newborn pups.

Pups are often a surprise – just when you’re watching one mother, another down the beach squirts out her pup. That’s wildlife.

Be patient. The seals are on their own timetable. Pregnant females will continue to arrive on the beach through February. Most births happen in January, and are more likely to occur at night.

Pups can be born anywhere on the beach, throughout the rookery, from the lighthouse to Arroyo Laguna.

Pups are all black, about three feet long and weight about 70 pounds when they’re born. They soon plump up on their mothers’ nourishing milk. They’ll nurse for a month. In the last few days of nursing, the mothers mate with one or more males. They wean the pups abruptly when they return to the ocean.

Beachmasters are vigilant

Dominance dictates the social organization on the beach. A beachmaster will defend a harem of 20 or 30 females and their pups. The beachmaster needs to be vigilant, because less dominant bulls will constantly attempt to sneak into the harem of females, or make a direct challenge to him. Subdominant, beta, bulls hang around the edges. The alpha bull tolerates some peripheral bulls, who help maintain the perimeter from other bulls.

Watch seals from a distance

Bulls that lose out find their way to other local beaches, sometimes called bachelor beaches. I don’t agree with calling them “loser beaches.” Only 1 percent of male elephant seal pups survive to prime breeding age of 12 or 13 years. Any seal that shows up is a winner in the survival sweepstakes. 

Hearst Memorial Beach at San Simeon Cove attracts them. Human beach visitors may be surprised by a seal among the driftwood.

FES will post guides there for the duration, through March, to advise visitors as to seals they may encounter.

The seals are not aggressive toward humans, but the bulls that come to San Simeon are tired and may be injured from losing their battles with other bulls. They may challenge other bulls to fight on the beach. Human visitors stay safe by giving the seals a wide berth. NOAA Marine LifeViewing Guidelines advise no closer than 50 yards, half a football field. Keep the dog leashed so as not to annoy them. Don’t get between two seals, who may decide to charge each other, or a seal and the water, in case he suddenly decides to go back into the waves.

Informed beach visitors can coexist with the seals. The Piedras Blancas rookery is an example of seals and humans sharing the beach. Stay safe and give the seals time to rest.

 

 

 

Breeding Season

A single mature bull elephant seal shifted his weight onto the sand at Piedras Blancas in mid-November. He’s the first of a couple hundred who will arrive for the breeding season.

Make a visit to the seals part of your Thanksgiving festivities.

Docents called him Romeo, although he didn’t show much energy. He has been swimming for weeks to return from as far as Alaska. He is taking some well-earned rest before the excitement of the females’ arrival.

Big and blubbery

He’s nice and fat. That’s an advantage to the bulls, who fast while they are on the beach. Recent research has shown that the bulls stop eating on their journey back to the Central Coast, and don’t start eating until they get back to Alaska, in March. They go without food for about five months.

They need a hefty load of blubber to carry them through the challenges of other bulls, to reach the season’s reward, mating with willing females. That’s in the future now. Pregnant females don’t usually arrive until December. After they have their pups, they nurse them for a month or so, coming into heat at the end of nursing and becoming receptive to mating.

Mating involves a lot of barking and tail flipping, but eventually they get the job done. That happens in late January and February. At least some bulls generally stay on the beach until March, when the last female leaves, so it’s a long time between fish dinners.

Young seals prepare to depart

Many juvenile seals remain on the beach through December. They are on the beach for their Fall Haul-Out, a six-week rest. More of those are males than females, because females mature earlier than males. Six-year-old males are still practicing their fighting moves on each other, while females the same age are having their first, second, and even third pups.

A few adult females may be on the beach. They are, for some reason, not pregnant. Whether they mate with younger bulls, or are able to mate under water, isn’t yet known. Over 90 percent of female seals have a pup every year. Those who skip a year present researchers with questions for which they have not yet found answers.

Beach transition

More adult bulls will arrive over the course of November and December. Look for an elephant-like trunk that hangs down onto the sand when the seal is resting, with a notch across it. Pink chest shields are another sign of maturity. Callused pink skin that extends up as far as the eyes when the seal is lying prone is typical of senior bulls.

The first pup of the season is usually born around mid-December. It’s onesy-twosy at first, increasing in frequency as hundreds of females arrive and more pups are born.

Citizen Science opportunity

The Coastal Commission invites all to photograph the extent of King Tides, coming up December 4 and 5. The photos document high water levels, showing how sea level rise will affect the coastline. Find the photo submission form here. Check out the photos taken in previous years of San Luis Obispo beaches. The tide inundated the rookery beaches, chasing seals to the edge of the bluffs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Young seals arrive

Young seals arrive for Haul-Out

Construction doesn’t faze them

Seals arrive daily on the beach at Piedras Blancas. They are young, both males and females. It’s the Fall Haul-Out, a rest for the young seals between migrations. They’ll continue arriving through October.

Seals fast for the four to six weeks they are on the beach during this autumn retreat. They rely on their blubber to meet their nutritional needs. They have the beach and the surf to themselves, before the adult bulls begin arriving around Thanksgiving for the breeding season. Some may stay on the beach into December.

Heavy equipment

This year, they are accompanied by construction crews. The culvert under the north boardwalk collapsed last January, during the big atmospheric river storm. State parks workers are replacing it. Seals remain nearby, ignoring the workers, who have fenced off their work area.

They will turn to the south boardwalk to replace a culvert after the north boardwalk is reopened. Part of the north boardwalk is open, from the north parking lot. That parking lot also leads to the Boucher Trail, two miles to the Piedras Blancas Light Station. Several points along that trail overlook elephant seal beaches.

The light station is open for tours by reservation only on Tuesdays, Thursday and Saturdays. Book ahead through recreation.gov.

Boisterous boys

The young males are willing to spar with each other, on the sand and in the water. It’s the nature of young guys to roughhouse. Some nose around young females, but they aren’t willing to mate. The ones on the beach are too young, and they have an estrus breeding cycle. Like dogs, they only mate when they are ready.

The seals take a rest between their two annual migrations. The young seals will leave the beach as adult bulls arrive in late November, migrating north and west until time to return to the beach to molt their skin in May. They left the beach in June, returning now. In between, they are diving and feeding, diving and feeding.

Males and females have different feeding strategies. Males migrate north along the coastline, diving to feed at the bottom along the continental shelf. Females migrate to the open ocean, feeding on prey they encounter there.

Males eat bottom-dwelling fish such as dogfish and hagfish, not targets for human tables. Females eat small fish in the mesopelagic layer. They don’t compete with fishermen, so elephant seals aren’t in conflict with them they way sea lions are.

Adult females

Occasionally a mature female, not pregnant, comes on to the beach during Fall Haul-Out. Nearly all mature female seals are pregnant every year, but some skip a year. Exactly why they aren’t pregnant is a subject of active research at Ano Nuevo Reserve and Sonoma State University. Tracking individual seals and understanding what’s going on is difficult, but researchers are making progress.

“We had our first adult female satellite tag recovery procedure last week,” Patrick Robinson, director of the Ano Nuevo Reserve said in an email. “She was not pregnant, but otherwise seemed healthy.  We're still learning about these seals that skip breeding!”

 

 

 

Bulls share the beach to rest

Lazy days on the sand

Bulls, young seals share the beach to rest

A group of bull elephant seals remains on the beach, mostly at the north end. Juvenile seals are arriving, their numbers increasing by the day. The smallest are the Young of the Year, last winter’s pups, returning from their first migration.

The bulls are the last of the group of adult males that have been on the beach for two months, for their annual molt. The youngsters molted in May. They are back for six weeks of rest, the Fall Haul-out.

Active bulls

Bulls don’t necessarily spend all their time resting. In mid-August, a dozen or so were in the surf, battling each other, to the delight of the summer visitors who came to watch. They can’t seem to resist a challenge, even when there aren’t breeding females to fight over.

One by one, the bulls will decide they have had enough, of fighting and resting, and leave the beach for the second of their annual migrations. They will swim north to their feeding grounds just off the continental shelf. They’ll spend the next three months or so bulking up. They will be at their blubbery best in November and December, when they return to the beach for the breeding season. They will need all the blubber they can pack on, to go as long as 100 days without feeding.

Fall Haul-Out

All the seals on the beach are elephant seals, whether they have that pendulous trunk-like nose or not. It’s rare for a sea lion or harbor seal to come onto the beach. You can see harbor seals on the near rocks, and hear sea lions barking from the “doorstop” islet farther offshore.

The juvenile seals range from the Young of the Year through about six years old. During those growing years, males and females look very much alike. Around age five, males begin growing that nose, and getting bigger than females.

The smallest seals are the Young of the Year, the pups that were born during last year’s breeding season. Every survivor is a winner, a prospective Supermom or beachmaster. They have dodged great white sharks and orcas to avoid being eaten, and have caught enough fish and squid to sustain themselves. They may not be any bigger than when they left the beach in March, but survival is everything at this stage. They can put on weight later.

Their blubber insulates them from the wide variations of temperature they confront, from the near-freezing depths at which they forage in the Northern Pacific to warm, sunny California beaches. Conserving energy is important, because they aren’t eating anything while they are here on the beach. They are living off their blubber.

Humans need to keep body temperature within narrow limits, but elephant seals’ core temperature can range 12 degrees around their normal 99 degrees. Seals in one group that researchers measured varied 18 degrees, from 87 to 105. Elephant seals are animals of the extremes.

New web cam

For those days when you can’t get out to the viewpoint, or want to know what’s going on to plan your next visit, Friends of the Elephant Seal and State Parks have installed a second live web cam. Checkboth out.

Bulls take a break

Easy living on the beach

Elephant seal bulls take a break

Summer is molting season for the elephant seal bulls. They are at rest, so viewing of their big noses and chest shields is excellent.

Catastrophic molt

All elephant seals molt their skin once a year. Pups molt when they are weaned, young seals and females molt in May and June. the bulls in July and August. Their coats’ color ranges from gray to brown and tan, although they look black when they arrive on the beach, wet and shiny. Last year’s brown layer of epidermis and fur peels off, revealing pearly gray fur underneath. The new coat will become tan and brown as the individual hairs finish growing out and stand up.

Friends of the Elephant Seal docents, in blue jackets, can let you handle pieces of the shed skin. The fur is short and stubbly, often compared to Astroturf. These seals rely on their blubber for warmth, not their fur.

The seals have to stay on the beach while they are molting. Blood flow increases to the new skin, and the seals would lose too much heat in the cold water. Molting takes about a month for each seal. They come and go individually, so molting seals are on the beach for a couple of months.

Scars last forever, and can be easily visible on the molting seals. A few showed serious shark bites, and many show battle scars and cookie cutter shark scars. Cookie cutter sharks are small sharks that take a circular plug of blubber from a seal, leaving a distinctive cookie cutter scar.

Bites must have been serious to produce some of these scars, but the seals survived. I like to think that blubber doesn’t have many nerve endings. It doesn’t have much blood supply, so the wounds don’t cause major blood loss.

Bulking up

The most dominant bulls spent as long as 100 days on the beach during the breeding season, November through March, defending their harems. They were at the low point in weight. The bulls have been feeding since they arrived at their northern foraging areas in March, after the breeding season.

They feed along the continental shelf of North America, in Canada and Alaska. They’ll return there after they leave the beach, to feed for another four or five months. When they return in November and December, they will be at their blubbery maximum.

The pile of bulls now on the beach looks fat and comfortable.

Bellowing in the mist

The beach is relatively quiet in the summer, but some bulls bellow their presence, from the water or on the beach. Adult bulls have unique calls, like having a name. They recognize each other, and remember whether they have fought in the past. Having settled who was the winner in the past, they don’t need to fight again. It helps reduce aggression.

They have to be loud, to make themselves heard over wind and surf. The loudest call measured registered 126 dB, one of the loudest sounds made by mammals on land.

For more on the seals’ vocalizations, watch a LabsideChat video with Caroline Casey, who researched the bulls’ calls.

See how she records the seals here. Very carefully!

Here come the bulls!

Seals in transition

Females and youngsters give way to bulls

Adult female seals and male and female juveniles occupy the beach through June. Mature bulls start arriving for their summer molt.

Elephant seals are migratory, so they are always coming and going. Summer marks the conclusion of the females’ short migration. As they leave, they embark on their long migration. The females won’t return until January, when they come to the beach to have their pups. Juveniles return in the fall.

Gestation

The adult females mated last winter, after they weaned their pups. That got the next pregnancy started by fertilizing the egg, but after that, development pauses.  The fertilized ovum makes only a few cell divisions and then stops developing, before it is ready to implant in the uterus.

Thin from nursing the pups for a month without eating, the mothers need to return to the ocean to add blubber before the fetus starts requiring nourishment. Recent research shows that they feed 20 to 24 hours a day during that two-month migration. They may travel as far as 3,700 miles.

They dive continuously, down to 1,600-5,000 feet, 20 minutes or so down and back, taking a two- to three-minute breath at the surface before making the next dive.

When the “slightly pregnant” females get back to the beach, they stop eating. Their skin starts to peel off, molting. During the molt, a surge of hormones causes the egg to resume developing and to attach to the uterus wall, beginning active gestation. It’s called delayed implantation.

There’s 11 months between mating and birth, but actual gestation is only eight months.

Feeding

The seals need to spend most of the time feeding, because they are eating small fish, most less than three inches long. They take 1,000 to 2,000 bites a day, snapping up small fish. It’s difficult, but few other predators compete with them for those abundant fish in what’s called the mesopelagic layer.

Those little fish, all together, dominate total fish biomass in the ocean. Female elephant seals evolved a feeding strategy that allows them access to lots of food that few other animals hunt. It’s a unique ecological niche.

The downside is that spending so much time feeding leaves little time for anything else, such as sleeping. Sleep among elephant seals is not well understood. They rest, and may sleep, on some of their dives, rolling onto their backs after they get deep enough and drifting back and forth like falling leaves. The seals sleep or rest less than an hour and a half a day.

Climate change

That mesopelagic layer of billions of little fish is being affected by climate change due to greenhouse gases. Changes there would be reflected in the elephant seals’ well-being.

“Elephant seals can be used as sentinels to better understand how rapid climate change alters the little-known but ecologically important mesopelagic ecosystem,” researchers concluded in their study, Forced into an ecological corner: Round-the-clock deep foraging on small prey by elephant seals.  

 

 

Skin molt

 All seals, all the time

Molting seals shed their skin

The Piedras Blancas elephant seal beaches are full of seals in May. It’s the busiest time of the year. All the females who had pups during the breeding season are back, along with all the male and female seals who are not yet fully mature.

Of the full herd, only this year’s pups and the mature bulls are not on the beach. They are on their migration, feeding before they return later in the summer and fall.

Feeding during the short migration

The females are looking good, fat from two months of feeding in the open ocean. Recent research showed that these seals, who departed in February thin from not eating during the breeding season, spend almost all their time after they leave the beach feeding. They average less than an hour and a half of sleep every day, diving constantly to devour enough fish to gain the weight they need.

Using electronic technology to measure jaw movements and record video of what the seals were eating, the researchers found the females relied on small fish in the open ocean. They dove to 1,300-2,000 feet, a zone where these small fish, which in total comprise most of the ocean’s fish biomass, are plentiful. The females snap their jaws between 1,000 and 2,000 times a day, to catch fish that weigh less than half an ounce.

These female seals are the only large animals down there, feeding on these fish. The males are simply too big to make a living on small fish, so they stay closer to the coast and hunt bigger prey on the ocean floor.

The downside is that it takes all day, every day, for these half-ton seals to eat enough to make up for the weight they lost during that month or more they spent on the beach, giving birth and nursing their pups.

The research was based on the Ano Nuevo colony. The research team includes Patrick Robinson, director of the Ano Nuevo Reserve, and UC Santa Cruz assistant professor Roxanne Beltran, who will discuss their work in the future at a public event in Cambria.

Molting

They return, with that sleek load of blubber, in May. They molt their skin, which we can see. What we can’t see is that their bodies are changing internally, preparing for the next pup to be born next winter.

This annual event gives them new skin to face the coming year. You can see the difference between the old, brown skin and the pearly gray new skin. As the hairs grow, their appearance will go back to shades of brown.

Young seals

The young males and females on the beach loll in the sun while their skin peels off. Young males spar, in the sand and in the water. They bark their complaints about being shoved around in the crowd.

Look for young males with noses just starting to grow. They are typically more active than their quiet mothers.

 

The seals molt their skin

 The Piedras Blancas elephant seal rookery is full of seals now, but that signature trunk-like nose isn’t among them. It’s adult females and young seals on the beach in the spring, molting their skin.

Adult bulls, the ones with the floppy noses, are out at sea bulking up after three months without food during the breeding season. They’ll return, fat and blubbery, in the summer for their annual molt.

Seals are arriving by the hundreds, to rest on the beach during the busiest time of the year. More seals are on the beach in May than even during breeding season. Look for unusual scars, colored identification tags and dyed identification markings.

Short migration

Female elephant seals make two annual migrations, the short one after the breeding season and the longer one after molting. After giving birth and nursing their pups during the winter breeding season without food, they are thin and need to eat. They leave their weaned pups on the beach and swim away for ten weeks or so, feeding and putting on the blubber. They need it to survive in their cold ocean home and to sustain them while they are on the beach for six weeks, when they do not eat at all.

The beach fills up with females and juveniles of both sexes. That’s 5,600 females who had pups on the seven or so miles of beaches that are considered the Piedras Blancas rookery, the females who didn’t have a pup this year, and countless juveniles. 

Molting

They arrive on the beach one by one, on their individual time schedules. The new, pearly gray skin is already forming beneath the old skin. Within a few days, the old skin begins to peel off – first around body openings such as eyes and around permanent scars. The old brown skin curls back and falls off.

They look ratty, but they’re fine. It’s normal, a ‘catastrophic molt.’ Elephant seals spend much of their lives 1,000 feet and deeper in the ocean. The pressure and the cold at that depth may account for the unusual annual molt. 

Molting takes about six weeks. Since seals arrive on the beach individually, starting and stopping at different times, seals are at all stages of molting in April and May. Some already have their new pearl gray skin, while others are just arriving. Look for the ragged edges of skin peeling back, seals that are entirely brown or entirely gray.

Weaned pups

Nearly all the season’s weaned pups have left on their first migration. About half make it, to return in the fall. Struggling pups make strand on local beaches. If you encounter one, you can report it to the Marine Mammal Center operations center in Morro Bay at (805) 771-8300. They will send out a team to evaluate it and rescue it if necessary.

Visitors can learn about the seals from the brochures available at the boardwalk and on the FES website, https://www.elephantseal.org/,. Friends of the Elephant Seal docents have not yet been cleared to return to helping visitors understand what they are seeing due to Covid restrictions.

 

Weaners on the beach

 

It’s weaner season!

Mostly, it’s weaners on the beach now. They look so perfect, in their new skin, unmarred by the rigors of ocean life. A few ult bulls remain, thin from three months without food on the beach. Everyone is resting.

Many weaners have nursed up to a healthy layer of blubber, which will sustain them until the leave the beach on their first migration. The high tides, including three King Tides, and high surf disrupted life on the beach this year. Storm Orlena in January, battered the beach with heavy rain and high wind for three days. Pups who get separated from their mothers may starve and die. Gulls and vultures clean up the remains.

Looking good

Seal pups, born from December through February, are born black, but they molt that newborn coat after they are weaned at four to six weeks old. Their new, mature, perfect skin is darker brown on top, light tan on the belly. Their skin will never look better.

The color pattern is called countershading, a common ocean camouflage. Predators swimming below them see the light belly blending with the bright surface above. Those swimming above the seal see the dark back blending into the dark depths.

Learning to hold their breath and swim

Weaners spend most of their time sleeping. They stir themselves to venture into the surf, practicing holding their breath. As they exercise their flippers by splashing around in the water, some of that blubber becomes muscle. They are preparing for their first migration.

They splash around mostly at night, although you may see some in the water during the day, especially in the morning. They are preparing for their life deep in the ocean, where light doesn’t penetrate.

One by one, they leave the beach, heading north. No one shows them the way. It’s one of the mysteries of animal migration. Some may get as far north as Alaska, but most don’t get that far.

Adults are out in the ocean

A few mature bulls remain on the beach, resting after an exhausting breeding season. They may have gone as long as 100 days without food, so they are thin and tired. They will feed and gain blubber on their migration and return in July and August.

Mother seals are out at seas, feeding, on their short migration, to return soon to molt. Some adult females and juveniles are already on the beach, preparing to molt.

San Simeon Cove

The bulls that frequented San Simeon Cove are gone.

Weaner pups who have left their birth beach but haven’t gotten very far strand at San Simeon Cove and other beaches. If they are underweight and exhausted, they may be rescued by a Marine Mammal Center team. This is the busy season for seal rescue.

Seals are thus far unaffected by coronavirus, but wildlife trafficking in other species is thought to be the source of the coronavirus crossover into human infection. Seals can carry other diseases that can affect humans and dogs, so if you see one on the beach, don’t go near it or touch it. Call the Marine Mammal Center operations center in Morro Bay at (805) 771-8300. They will send out a team to evaluate it and rescue it if necessary.

 

 

Pup time!

Still time to see a pup born

Pregnant females are still arriving at Piedras Blancas to give birth to their pups. Most pups are born at night, but daytime births are common. More than 5,000 pups will be born in the rookery, so you could get lucky. If not, view a video here.

The Piedras Blancas viewpoint remains open to the public. Wear a mask and keep social distance.

King Tides

King Tides are past for this season, but high tides continue. High water threatens pups on the beach. They can swim, but lack the stamina to survive in the ocean. If washed out, skinny young pups without insulating blubber to keep them warm and buoyant can drown. 

Gaining weight

Pups start nursing within a day or so of being born. Pups born in December are already being weaned. Look for rotund, fat pups.

Pups will nurse from any mother willing to tolerate them. Most pups nurse, or attempt to nurse, on at least one mother other than their own. Not every pup survives, and mothers whose pups have died may adopt one or more strays. Some mothers are hostile to other pups and other mothers and aggressively chase them away.

Mothers produce milk by metabolizing their blubber. They lose two pounds for every pound the pup gains. Look for thinner mothers lying next to fat pups.

Around 95 percent of pups at Piedras Blancas survive to be weaned.

Breeding and competition

As pups are weaned, mothers come into estrus, heat, like dogs. They mate before they return to the ocean.

Females in estrus spark battles between males. Most dominance interactions are easy to observe: One bull bellows or raises his head to challenge, and one or more others retreat.  

But with breeding rights at stake, males are willing to fight. They bump chests and rip at each other’s chest shield, the crinkled skin around the neck, with their teeth. Battles can be bloody. Dominant males take no notice of pups or mothers as they chase each other across the beach.

Watch as two bulls challenge each other, and their conflict ripples through the rest of the seals. With new females arriving, pups born, pups being weaned, mothers mating and departing, the beach is in constant motion.

Bulls on other beaches

The bulls who lose those fights find other beaches to heal their wounds and rest up. Hearst Memorial State Beach at San Simeon Cove is especially popular with them. Seals have also hauled out on Moonstone Beach and other places. Unsuspecting beachgoers don’t expect to find a two-ton wild animal in the spot they planned to have a picnic.

Stay back from the seals, and don’t let the dog get near. Pick up a pocket guide from one of the plastic displays and follow the suggestions.

The seals are on the beach temporarily, during the breeding season. The Central Coast is fortunate to share its beaches with these iconic wildlife. People and seals can coexist.

 

 

Bulls on the beach

 

Sharing the beach

Winter breeding brings elephant seals to popularbeaches

Central Coast visitors enjoy viewing the elephant seals during their winter pup and breeding season. On some beaches, though, it’s a close encounter with two-ton seals. The public can stay safe on Central Coast beaches by giving the seals plenty of room.

These mammoth bull seals may be as big as 13 feet long and weigh up to 5,000 pounds. Some win their battles for dominance and remain on the breeding beaches, but those who lose out find refuge where they can. That’s often at Hearst Memorial Beach in San Simeon, where beachgoers picnic, walk their dogs and head out to hike to San Simeon Point.

The seals are big wild animals. The ones who come to the beach have lost battles to even bigger seals. They may be injured and exhausted. They have been through a lot already. Curious visitors and sniffing dogs can provoke confrontations that result in injury and infection. Dogs need to remain leashed while visiting any beach where seals are hauled out.

Beachgoers’ activities affect the seals’ ability to rest and recover. They need to be left alone on the beach.

Informational signs and pocket guides of safe Elephant Seal Viewing Guidelines are on site.

Give the seals as much space as possible. They look like they are sleeping, but they can move faster than you think. Steer clear.

Stay upland of seals, not between the seal and the edge of the water. That sleeping seal may decide it’s time for him to leave. Don’t get in his way.

Give seals who are threatening each other extra space. They could charge and engage each other in battle.

Being part of the elephant seal’s breeding season is exciting. The Central Coast is fortunate to be the place the seals have chosen. All species are welcome on Central Coast beaches. Just not too close to each other.

All Covid restrictions and precautions are observed in elephant seal viewing areas, https://elephantseal.org/covid-19-update/. Any concerns can be reported to State Park Rangers at 805-927-2068.

BOX:

https://elephantseal.org/elephant-seal-viewing-guidelines/

Be aware of your surroundings at all times Elephant seals are not always easy to see. Their natural camouflage blends into sand and driftwood. Stay at a distance. Use binoculars or a telephoto lens, or take photos from the pier. If a seal lifts his head to look at you, you have disturbed him and you are too close.

Keep your dog on a leash at all times. Elephant seals can bite with their large, sharp teeth. For your pet’s safety, do not ever allow your dog to approach a seal, regardless of how inactive the seal seems.

Keep your voice down. Elephant seals have ears and can hear you. Loud noises disturb them. Do not shout or call out to each other on the beach. If your dog is barking, please leave the beach.

Move slowly and minimize your body movements. Elephant seals have excellent eyesight and can see you.

Do not touch seals or throw objects into the water at seals. These actions disturb resting seals. The Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibits harassment of all marine mammals.

Leave your drone at home. This is a no-drone zone.

Consider the seal’s perspective. How would you feel being interrupted constantly while you lie on the beach? How would you respond to loud noises, barking dogs and movement all around you? How would you react to someone causing you harm? Please allow the seals to rest undisturbed.