Showtime!

Lots of activity during seal breeding season 

The first pups of the season were born over the December 16-17 weekend. More will follow, over 5,000 in the Piedras Blancas rookery before the breeding season is over in mid-March.

Bulls fight for dominance, to reign over territory and have breeding rights. Mothers protect their pups from the fray and high tides. When it isn’t a noisy uproar, mothers nurse their pups peacefully, and sleep beside them in scenes that evoke recognition of mothers everywhere.

Through the season, newborns start out skinny and fill out to rotund 250-pound weaned pups. Bulls and mothers get thinner as time goes by. Only the pups eat during the breeding season.

No schedule for births

Pups are born day and night. Everyone wants to witness a birth, but predicting which seal will give birth next is uncertain. A prospective mother may fuss and toss a lot of sand, digging ditches on both sides of her round body. And then she may fall asleep.

While you’re watching one, another may give birth down the beach. Gulls announce the births, swirling around to clean up the afterbirth. Nature’s clean-up crew.

Pups may be born head or tail first. The water breaks, and soon a pup emerges.

Recognize the new pup

Newborns have black coats. They are about three feet long and weigh about 70 pounds. 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 stop nursing the pup, who now weighs 250 pounds or more, and soon return to the ocean.

They need to feed, because they haven’t had anything to eat since before they arrived at the beach. They lose about a third of their body weight nursing that pup. It’s time to build up their blubber to support development of next year’s pup.

After giving this year’s pup a head start, they go on their annual short migration. They will return in two or three months, fatter, to molt their skin.

Wildlife viewing requires patience. Pregnant females will continue to arrive on the beach, into February. Check the live webcam for beach conditions, www.elephantseal.org.

Bulls on alert

Dominant bulls, who rested peacefully next to their brothers last summer, are now ready to take on all comers. Watch as one bull surfs onto the sand. Bulls that scurry away are less dominant. The ones who stand their ground are considering defending their turf.

The stand-off may come to blows. The goal of battling is to establish the dominance hierarchy, which actually reduces conflict. Bulls who acknowledge the dominant beachmaster won’t challenge him, and he won’t need to fight every bull on the beach. But some will. A beachmaster can be deposed by a tougher bull at any point during the breeding season.

Bulls have distinctive individual vocalizations. They recognize each other. If they have fought before, they won’t challenge each other again. They also recognize each other by sight.

But there’s always a new bull on the beach to raise the issue. There’s a lot at stake. Only the most dominant bulls get to breed.

Bulls retreat to other beaches

Some less dominant bulls hang out on the beach, evading the beachmaster’s notice and attempting to sneak in and mate. Sometimes, they do!

Others leave the breeding beaches behind and swim to other beaches to heal their battle wounds and rest. Visitors may encounter them, especially at Hearst Memorial Beach at San Simeon Cove. Friends of the Elephant Seal docents watch over seals and beachgoers, advising on how to avoid the seals when they are resting on the sand or in the lagoon.

It’s an exciting and unusual experience, coming in such close contact with huge wild animals. Bulls may challenge each other, or simply ignore humans when they decide to move across the beach or return to the ocean.

NOAA Marine Life Viewing Guidelines (https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/wildlife-viewing/) 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.

The seals can be dangerous, so give them plenty of space. Sharing the beach with them is a privilege. And visitors get to return home with a great story!

 

 

 

Titans of Piedras Blancas

Bulls arrive for breeding season

Elephant seal bulls begin arriving around Thanksgiving for the winter breeding season. They are at their largest physical bulk, after months of feeding along the North American continental shelf. They’ll need it to get through to March without eating.

Look for long noses and big pink chest shields on massive bodies. They surf out onto the sand, their massive weight now subject to gravity instead of supported by water. Welcome to life on land!

Smaller seals are juveniles, still resting on the beach from their Fall Haul Out. They will soon leave on their own migration. They’ll feed and grow bigger, to return next spring. Seals spend most of their lives at sea.

No feeding here

Bulls stop feeding when they leave their foraging grounds and head south for the breeding beaches. They’ve been eating fish and squid, gaining as much as 28 pounds a day, since they left the Central Coast in August and September. They need enough blubber to survive 100 days or more, to the end of the breeding season. They are huge now, but will get thin over the coming months.

Every bull on the beach is a survivor in a tough system. As few as one percent of male pups born reach breeding age.

Surviving isn’t enough to guarantee breeding, though. They jockey for dominance and breeding rights. Two thirds of the bulls, the less dominant ones, don’t get to breed at all.

Why they fight

Early arrivals find enough beach to separate them. Some pick fights anyway. You may see seals fighting.

To get breeding rights, males fight for dominance and to defend their harem of females. They arrive looking for a fight and it only gets worse. Size is an advantage, but not the only factor. The alpha bull, the beachmaster, is frequently challenged by other bulls. He can lose a battle and be replaced by another tough guy.

Beachmasters are vigilant about chasing other bulls away from the harem, but it’s a constant challenge. All bulls are focused on mating, regardless of their status in the beach social hierarchy. Lower ranking bulls sneak around the harem and try to mate with females. They sometimes get away with it.

Non-breeding beaches

Less dominant bulls who lose battles may leave the beach and take refuge on other, non-breeding beaches. Look for them at San Simeon Cove, along Moonstone Beach, and other quiet, sandy places. It’s like the old joke: Where does a two-ton seal go? Anywhere he wants.

Females give birth

Females start to arrive in December, with the first pup born around the middle of the month. More females arrive in January and February, up to around 5,000 at the height of the season.

But they aren’t ready to mate until after they’ve nursed that pup for a month or so. They come into estrus, like dogs.

“Of course, these animals are dangerous,” writes elephant seal researcher Burney LeBoeuf in Elephant Seals: Pushing the Limits on Land and at Sea. “Males will run over you as if you were a piece of furniture in their way.”

Speakers Bureau

If your organization would like to learn more about the seals Friends of the Elephant Seal offers free speakers. To arrange a speaker, call the FES office, (805) 924-1628 or request a speaker through the website, https://elephantseal.org/speakers-bureau/. The Speaker’s Bureau Coordinator will respond and set up a date.

https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article282000123.html 

 

New wildlife tags help Central Coast researchers understand impacts of offshore wind projects

Piedras Blancas Light Station has a new electronic wildlifetracking system, to collect data on small birds and bats, and is the site for a new acoustic bat monitoring project. The data are important for understanding how the Offshore Wind projects may affect these smaller species.

Motus

The Motus Wildlife Tracking System is an international collaborative research network that tracks birds, bats and insects with tiny transmitters. The tags transmit location data back to scientists, who then can use it for research and education. The data inform ecology and conservation of these migratory species.  Motus is a program of Birds Canada in partnership with collaborating researchers and organizations. Data collected are shared among all researchers.

“Motus allows us to track species too small to tag with traditional GPS tags,” said Laney White, U.S. Geological Survey's Western Ecological Research Center biologist.

USGS Western Ecological Research Center biologist Laney White drives a Zodiac to one of the USGS Ashy Storm Petrel study sites (photo credit: J. Felis).

The Piedras Blancas installation is funded for three years by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a long-term investment. The system can be used to monitor bird and bat movements. In the future, Motus may be used to study animal movement around the turbines off the West Coast. In Central and Southern California, the USGS is in the process of building 25 stations.

The tiny battery-powered tag can weigh less than half a gram, less than the weight of a paperclip, and costs about $200. It can be glued to the bird, sutured, or attached with a harness or leg band. The batteries can be solar powered and last years.

“Until you’ve got a bird in hand, you can’t always tell which method will work,” Ms. White said.

Cassin’s Auklets, Ashy Storm-Petrels, and Western Gulls will be tagged. Western Gulls will also get GPS tags that can detect Motus tags, making them mobile receiving stations and expanding the network’s reach offshore.

USGS wildlife biologist Emma Kelsey holds a Cassin's Auklet in the Channel Islands (photo: J. Felis).

In less rigorous environments, the tags can last a bird’s lifetime. In the salty marine environment, they probably won’t last that long.

The system needs international collaboration with Canada and Mexico, because birds and bats migrate across international boundaries.

Acoustic bat monitoring

Bats hunt the insects that are their food with sonar echolocation.

“Insects are nimble,” said USGS acoustic specialist Bethany Schulze. “They are good at evading capture.”

Globally, bats play a significant ecological role, in pest control, pollination, seed dispersal and as bioindicators of environmental toxins. The bat in the coal mine, as it were.

Hoary bats, a migratory species, could be affected by the West Coast Wind Projects proposed for 20-30 miles offshore. Motus wildlife tracking and acoustic bat detectors can provide data to document how offshore bat activity is different from coastal; which species migrate offshore; whether their migration is seasonal; and ultimately, whether the wind turbines will affect them.

Piedras Blancas is the first of 10 coastal acoustic monitoring sited set up. The solar-powered acoustic bat detector is holding up well so far, Ms. Schulze said.

All 20 coastal and offshore sites are already collecting data, from 0.3 to 120 km offshore. They are on exposed areas at the edge of the ocean. They record bats calling as they fly past.

“I just deployed our last site yesterday (November 4), so now all 20 sites are collecting data!” she wrote in an email.

Target species are Hoary bats, Mexican free-tailed bats, Western Red bats, and Silver-haired bats. California bats feed mainly on insects.

 

Ms. Schulze follows the bats where they go. One Hoary bat – “they’re the big fluffy ones” – was tagged in Marin County, then tracked to north of Sacramento before it flew north to Washington state.

 

Collaborating with the U.S. Coast Guard, she’s been lowered in a basket by helicopter to deploy an acoustic bat detector on a rock in the middle of the ocean.

 

She and the rest of the Western Ecological Research Team will continue to follow the bats for several more years.

Plenty of seals

 Young seals take a break

The juvenile seal Haul-Out continues in October. More seals arrive every day. They don’t have the eponymous (look it up) trunk-like nose, but some have other markings. They are all elephant seals, on their way to maturity.

R&R

Every young seal that finds its way to the beach is a success story. Each one has so far conquered the challenges of learning to hunt food in the dark, cold ocean at 1,000 feet and deeper. They have evaded their predators, swimming back to the surface only briefly, through the “lightscape of fear,” to catch a two-minute breath and them dive down again. Rising to the surface though the range of their white shark and orca predators is the most dangerous time for them.

The seals on the beach in October range from last year’s pups, less than a year old, to about six years old. The older males show signs of that elephant trunk staring to develop.

They are adjusting their migratory schedule. As they mature, they will return to the beach in December and January, for the breeding season. As juveniles, they avoid the hectic threats of that season by hauling out in the autumn months.

Local heroes

The Piedras Blancas site is featured in Smithsonian magazine. This beach is an unusual success story at the intersection of humans and wildlife. Typically, when wildlife crosses human paths, the wildlife loses out, often catastrophically. In this case, the collaboration of state and local agencies and passionate local residents made it work.

Instead of carnage, the site has become a tourist attraction and an informal education center for ocean science. By training and managing volunteer docents, Friends of the Elephant Seal plays a significant role in keeping seals and visitors safe from each other.

At Piedras Blancas, that’s made simpler by the landscape of bluffs overlooking the beach. The boardwalks keep visitors safe while providing unlimited viewing.

During the breeding season, it’s more complicated. Subdominant bulls, chased off the breeding beaches, come to San Simeon Cove to heal their wounds. FES has a special program to help visitors there navigate around the bulls.

It can be a delicate dance, but visitors come to the beach because they love the ocean. They are revived and renewed. With FES guides providing informal education about these amazing animals, both sides can safely coexist.

Speakers Bureau

Friends of the Elephant Seal offers presentations to local organizations in SLO County. Trained speakers have given presentations to more than 100 clubs and organizations, almost 3,000 persons in recent years, despite the Covid hiatus.

Speakers are fully self-contained and travel with all the audio and visual equipment needed to give their presentation to any age group and size of audience.

The Speakers Bureau has slide and video presentations introducing the Piedras Blancas rookery as well as each of the seasons in the seals’ annual cycle. The Birthing and Breeding presentations are appropriate now, since that season begins in December.

Speakers Bureau presentations are appropriate for civic clubs, schools, libraries, associations, churches, charitable organizations and other common interest groups. There is no charge to the group for this educational service.

To arrange a speaker, call the FES office, (805) 924-1628 or request a speaker through the website. The Speaker’s Bureau Coordinator will respond and set up a date.

Back for Haul-Out!

Young seals have the beach to themselves

Every day, more young seals arrive at Piedras Blancas elephant seal beaches. They are here for the annual haul-out.

Hundreds of them sleep on the beach and spar with each other, on the sand and in the water. You can tell a lot about them by observing their size, nose development, scars, and identification tags and marks.

Seals or sardines? Young seals sleep peacefully on the sand. (Christine Heinrichs photo)

Which seal is which

Bigger seals are older seals, but the smallest may be the Young of the Year, last year’s pups returning from their first migration. Big welcome back for those that survived!

Most of the young seals are males. Although half of pups born are male and half are female, females mature faster. Some are pregnant by two years old, and nearly all by age four. They have already joined the adult herd, so more males are among the juveniles on the beach now.

Males start growing that distinctive nose when they are about five. It continues to grow throughout their lives. Compare nose size among the young seals on the sand for relative age.

 Two young seals show off their growing noses as they spar in the surf. (Chrisitne Heinrichs photo)

Migratory seals

Most young seals don’t have many scars, but they may have tags or dyed identification numbers. This is a Citizen Science opportunity. Report any identifying marks to Friends of the Elephant Seal docents, or go to the website to submit a report.

Reports of marked and tagged seals tells the researchers who marked them where the seals are now. That research has revealed how far the seals traveled, further than even the scientists imagined.

Compare the migration of juveniles and adult seals on the maps at UC Santa Cruz’s Beltran Lab.

Seals differ in their migratory timing. Some juveniles don’t return in the fall at all. Because they are always coming and going, every day is different at the viewpoint. They aren’t like a flock of birds or a herd of wildebeests. Each seal is gradually adjusting when to arrive and depart. As they mature, they will coordinate their migrations with the rest of the adults, and join the breeding herd in December.

San Simeon Cove Winter Guides

Friends of the Elephant Seal is recruiting volunteers for special duty at San Simeon Cove, December through March. That’s elephant seal breeding season. Although Piedras Blancas rookery is the main local breeding area, subdominant bulls that are chased off those beaches often come to San Simeon Cove to rest and recuperate from their battle wounds.

That can be a problem, when human visitors and their dogs come to the beach. They don’t expect to share the beach with two-ton seals. FES’s trained Winter Guides help keep everyone safe by advising visitors how to navigate around the seals. It’s a teachable moment for the public to learn about the wildlife who whom we share the world.

The bull seals aren’t aggressive toward beachgoers, but they can be dangerous. Visitors need to keep their dogs from annoying the seals, and stay well back. Seals may challenge each other, or decide to return to the ocean without warning to visitors strolling down the beach.

FES trains volunteers to educate the public and help everyone enjoy visiting the beach. Join them by applying online by October 16. Questions? Call 805-924-1628. Must be 18 or older. Commit to two four-hour shifts a month, December through March. Must be friendly, outgoing, able to stand for three to four hours and walk on the beach in a variety of weather conditions – and love the seals.

“This is a great opportunity to learn more about elephant seal behavior in a unique environment,” FES board president Kathy Curtis said in a press release. “Seasonal residents, weekend travelers, couples, students and full-time employees are encouraged to apply for this short-term volunteer experience.”

 

The Biggest and the Smallest

 Bulls and young of the year rest on the sand

Young seals are arriving on the beach for the fall Haul-Out. They join the mature bulls who are completing their annual molt. It’s a beach of contrasts.

A flock of Heermann’s gulls joined the seals on the south beach. These gulls nest in Mexico, but migrate north during the non-breeding season. They are easy to identify, with their dark gray plumage and red bills. The elephant seals are the main attraction at the viewpoint, but keep your eyes out for other wildlife.

Juvenile seals

The smallest seals are my heroes on the beach. They are last winter’s pups, the Young of the Year. Any pup that survives that first migration, begun last spring, has passed a major hurdle on the way to adulthood. Only about half survive, so they may be small, but they are winners in the test of survival. Their skin is perfect, smooth and unscarred.

 These young of the year rest near full-grown bulls. They seem to take no notice of each other. Note the scar on the youngster on the left. (Christine Heinrichs photo)

Moving up in size are older seals. Not yet mature, but getting there. Males are more common among the juveniles, because males take longer to reach maturity, at age eight. Females may be mature and pregnant as early as two years old, most by age four.

Young males and females look very much alike. Around age five, males begin growing that nose, and get bigger than females.

They are the early arrivals for the Fall Haul-Out, six weeks or so of rest in September through November. They are synchronizing their timing with the rest of the seals, returning to the beach at predictable seasons.

Migration

Heather Liwanag and her Team Ellie at Cal Poly tagged 10 weaned pups last spring, at the Vandenberg and San Nicolas, in the Channel Islands, colonies. The satellite tags allow the team, and the public, to see where they go. Satellite Tags 2023 — VIP Lab (calpoly-viplab.com)

The young seals know to head generally north, along the same routes the rest of the seals take. Most didn’t go as far as mature seals, but one, Monarch, swam to the Gulf of Alaska, a 4,000-mile trip.

 

Fox stayed closer to his home beach, within a couple of hundred miles of his Channel Island rookery.

 

They are diving and feeding almost constantly, more than 20 hours a day. Satellite signals transmit only when the seal surfaces to take a breath.

Roxanne Beltran and her team at the University of California Santa Cruz are tracking first year and older seals. Check out their journeys at Beltran Lab – Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California Santa Cruz (ucsc.edu).

One seven-year-old female departed in June on her second trip 3,452 miles west. She went to the same location, the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount chain, two years ago.

Constantly diving as she moves forward, she has covered about 50 horizontal miles a day. By mid-August, the journey has taken her ten weeks.

She hasn’t set a record – yet. That’s held by Phyllis, who swam nearly to Japan, 7,400 miles, in 2017. The mighty Phyllis returns after record-shattering swim (ucsc.edu)

Juvenile seals arrive and depart individually, on their own schedules. Young seals will be on the beach through the end of November, and perhaps beyond.

Bigger is bigger

The mature bulls are mostly done with their annual molt, last year’s skin peeling off to expose new skin underneath. Compare the size of the nose, the proboscis, to compare age. The proboscis continues to grow throughout a seal’s life, so bigger is older.

This big bull's chest shield is bright pink as the skin on it molts and peels away. He's taking no lip from a younger bull. (Christine Heinrichs photo)

Although no adult females are on the beach for them to fight over, the bulls have been entertaining visitors with loud calling and bad-tempered sparring among themselves. Mostly they sleep.

Every day more bulls leave the beach, returning to the ocean to continue bulking up in anticipation of the breeding season. That will be their next appearance on the beach, in November and December. They arrive before the pregnant females, who begin to arrive in December.

They’ll need all the blubber they can gain. They may go without food for as long as 120 days as they battle for dominance and breeding rights then.

 Read the column in the Tribune here. 

The titans return!

Adult bulls throw their weight around

https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article276817486.html 

The full-grown elephant seal bulls are returning to Piedras Blancas for their summer break from foraging in the ocean. As one bull arrived on the beach, he cleared females, juveniles, and one subadult bull from his path as soon as he arrived.

This video, posted to the Friends of the Elephant Seal YouTube channel, Look who's here for the summer molt at Piedras Blancas! - YouTube, is edited from his first ten minutes on the beach

by Kathy Curtis, president of the FES board. If it seems like he is taking a long time to

secure his place on the beach, remember he hasn’t used his land muscles for three months or more, and now weighs several hundred pounds more than when last on land.

Displacement, making other seals move out of his way, is a measure of dominance. He makes it clear who is dominant on this stretch of beach!

Dominance helps bulls settle their status without having to fight. Summer is a good time for visitors to observe these senior bulls at rest.

Molting

This bull is one of the first to arrive for a few weeks on the beach, to molt his skin. Some adult females and juveniles linger on the beach, completing their molt. They will leave on their next migration, leaving the beach to the bigger bulls for the summer.

Elephant seals molt their skin annually. The old brown and tan skin peels off in chunks, revealing the new skin underneath. New hairs are just beginning to grow, so the skin is gray. As the hair grows, the color becomes brown.

The upper layer of skin is new, but old scars remain. Look for the skin to begin peeling off around the eyes and old scars.

FES docents have samples of the bristly molted skin. Ask to see and touch it. Some describe it as feeling like Astroturf. Elephant seals don’t have the lush fur of some other seals and otters. Elephant seals rely on their blubber, not their fur, for warmth.

Female migration

Adult females leave to go on their long migration of the year. They’ll spend the next seven months feeding at sea. They are pregnant with the next generation.

The embryo conceived after they weaned their pups last winter has been suspended since then. Now, after they finish molting, it begins developing. They will return in winter to give birth.

Juvenile migration

Juveniles leave the beach for a shorter migration, returning in the fall for their annual Haul-Out.

Juvenile migrations are less studied than adults, so Heather Liwanag, and her Team Ellie at the Vertebrate Integrative Physiology (VIP) Lab at Cal Poly have been tagging weaned pups and tracking them on their first migration to see where they go.

They knew to head north. Some ventured much further than others. Check out the maps showing their routes at Satellite Tags 2023 — VIP Lab (calpoly-viplab.com) and Satellite Tags 2022 — VIP Lab (calpoly-viplab.com). Try out the zoom and measurement features of the map. 

Light Station Open House

Piedras Blancas Light Station will be open free, July 5 and 19 and August 2 and 16, 10 am -2 pm. Hike in from the north parking lot of elephant seal viewpoint Boucher Trail trailhead or from the Boucher Trail trailhead a mile north of the lighthouse.

Observe the elephant seals from several other vantage points along the trail.

For more information, check the website Hike In Open House - Piedras Blancas Light Station or email PiedrasBlancasTours@gmail.com.

Seals get serious about resting

Adult females join youngsters to molt 

May actually brings more elephant seals to the Piedras Blancas beach than the winter breeding season. Lots of seals, doing a lot of sleeping.

That’s because all the adult females and the not-yet-mature juveniles begin arriving in April and linger on the beach through June. The females left the beach after giving birth and mating to get next year’s pup started in February and March. They’ve been regaining weight lost to their nursing pups, so that they are physically strong enough to support another pregnancy.

The juveniles left the beach to the breeding adults during the winter. They return to the calmer beach of spring.

All will molt their skin during their stay.

Molting

The old brown skin and hair peels off in chunks, exposing new skin and hair underneath. Look for pearly gray seals next to brown and tan seals. Check out the ones with skin curling off around eyes and nose. Old scars also start peeling back the molted skin. You may see a marked seal. Check with a docent or contact elephantseal.org to report a marked seal. All marks are temporary, since they come off with the molted skin.

Female migration

Unseen, the egg fertilized in mating two months ago has suspended development during the short post-breeding migration. After molting it implants in the uterine wall and begins developing into a pup.

After resting and molting in May and June, the juveniles go to sea until they return for the fall haul-out. The pregnant females will leave on their long migration, to return in January to give birth to their pups.

Seals and Floating Offshore Wind turbines

Elephant seals are one of the many marine mammal, sea turtle, fish and marine bird species that are the subject of research efforts to investigate ocean conditions relative to Floating Offshore Wind projects.

The Coastal Commission was briefed at its May 11 meeting by energy company representatives, scientists, state agency representatives, fishermen and others. Watch the video recording of that briefing here. Slides and videos are in the Presentations drop-down menu.

Ben Ruttenberg, director of Cal Poly’s Center for Coastal Marine Sciences, gave a presentation on knowledge gaps in the deep ocean, at 57:23 into the video. At 4,000 feet, the depth off the Central Coast 20 miles offshore where wind turbines will be located, little is known. He proposes using Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to assist in the research.

Oceanography consultant Grace Chang gave a presentation on Upwelling at 1:13:54. Brandon Southall of UC Santa Cruz, Duke University, and his own company, Southall Environmental Associates, presented background on the effects of sound on marine mammals and sea turtles at 1:31:28. Josh Adams of the US Geological Survey is leading a team studying the effects on marine birds, at 1:53:25.

The entire briefing is of interest, but these presentations are especially significant for elephant seals and other wildlife. 

Ports

The Offshore Wind projects will also require substantial onshore support infrastructure. Morro Bay is being considered for Operations and Maintenance, but larger ports, such as Humboldt, Los Angeles and Long Beach, are needed for manufacturing and fabrication of the 1,100-foot turbines and for staging and integration, assembling the turbines and towing them out to sea.

They’ll also need waterfront and onshore upgrades for fueling, warehouses, offices, parking, and crew support services.

See port reports from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, California Floating Offshore WindRegional Ports Assessment;

the California State Lands Commission, “Alternative Port Assessment to Support OffshoreWind;”

and REACH Central Coast.

 

 https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article275712876.html

Seal Star Quality!

Tracked seal delivers data 

Every day brings surprises at the Piedras Blancas elephant seal viewpoint, but April brought an especially exciting seal to the beach. Docents spotted her on April 5, with two tracking devices attached. One was on her head, the other on her back. She was carrying messages from long ago and far away.

Such electronic tracking devices are used by the research team at University of California Santa Cruz campus, so Friends of the Elephant Seal docents notified them right away. Salma Abdel-Raheem, Ph.D. student in the Beltran Lab in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, recognized the seal as one of her research subjects. The team worked with their colleague Dr. Dan Costa to get the State Park and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration permits required to go on to the beach and retrieve the devices.

 

All the pieces were in place to recover the devices on Easter Sunday, April 9. After carefully shooing away the other seals and giving the seal a sedative injection, they cut off the zip ties and electrical splicing tape holding the device to a mesh footprints glued to the fur. They also collected blood and tissue samples. Success!

 This journey began May 2022

The research team glued the tracking devices to this seal May 2, 2022 at Año Nuevo. The seal was two years old then, approaching adulthood from adolescence. She hauled out at Point Reyes a few months later, on September 19, and stayed to October 24, a typical juvenile haul-out.

“We tried to retrieve her tags during this period, but she was only accessible by boat and weather conditions were not favorable,” Ms. Abdel-Raheem said.

The seal left the beach on her next migration, and Piedras Blancas was the next they knew of her. That 342-day trip is the longest of any of the juvenile seals the team has tracked so far, nearly double the average trip of 184 days.

“We're really excited to see what she’s been up to in her year-long adventure!” Ms. Abdel-Raheem said.

 Successful foraging

She fed well during that migration, doubling her mass from 170 kgs (~375 lbs) in May 2022 to 344 kgs (~760 lbs) when they recovered her tags on April 9, more than any other seal the team has studied. 

She is beautiful and sleek, without any scars or defects. I thought she was absolutely perfect, a Rock Star of a seal. The FES docents started calling her Gigi.

Somewhere along the way, Gigi lost the VHF transmitter that allowed the team to find her on the beach. However, the tracking devices continued collecting data – salinity, depth, light, temperature, and accelerometers that measure the orientation of the animal in the water column as well as its speed and acceleration.

“We can put these data together to help us formulate an idea of what the seal is doing while out at sea. We can infer the number of prey capture attempts, the body condition via buoyancy, how much time the animal spends traveling, resting, or foraging, how the animal responds to changes in its environment,” Ms. Abdel-Raheem said. “These data are critical in informing our understanding of the ecology and physiology of this species throughout juvenile development.”

Along with Ms. Abdel-Raheem, the tag recovery team included her two lab-mates, Zea Premo and Milagros Rivera, and their adviser Dr. Roxanne Beltran. Zea is studying the development of diving physiology in juvenile seals by using the blood and tissue samples that they collect; Milagros is interested in the genetic diversity of northern elephant seals and uses the DNA samples to inform their research.

The mesh footprint that held the tracking devices will fall off as Gigi molts on the beach, now blending in among her sisters. Thanks, Gigi, and farewell.

 

Pups survive storms

Weaned pups move forward despite raging weather

California’s coast has been pummeled by storms this winter. The pups born in this year’s breeding season continue to mature and develop. As they do, they leave the beach on their first migration. 

The beach has been much changed by the heavy rains and high tides. The north beach at the Piedras Blancas viewpoint has lost a lot of its sand. Few mothers raised pups on that beach this season. 

Much sand was washed off the south beach, too, and water gushing from the culvert carved a deep channel. 

Weanlings 

Fat weaned pups, weaners or weanlings, appear not to take much notice. Their blubber insulates them from cold and wet. They find a spot among their peers and settle into sleep. Look for roly-poly seals. 

Most have molted their black birth coats, although you may see some still peeling. After they have molted, they have the counter-shaded coat of mature seals, dark on the back and light on the belly. They look so perfect! No scars or marks of older seals, whose skin tells the story of depredations at sea and battles on land. 

They socialize in groups called pods. See them lying close to the base of the cliffs, or across the beach where they can avoid any adult seal mating or fighting. 

They take to the surf to practice holding their breath, swimming and diving. They have strong instincts, but need practice to polish their swimming and diving skills. They increase how long they can hold their breath. They need to stay under water long enough to catch food, and dive deep enough to avoid predators. 

Blubber into muscle 

They haven’t had anything to eat since their mothers left. They metabolize their blubber until they begin catching their own food. They take this time on the beach to exercise, turning some of that blubber into muscle. 

They are more likely to be in the water at night, but you may see them splashing around during the day. Their life deep in the ocean will require them to hunt in the dark depths. 

No one teaches them how to hunt. Although most survive on the beach, only half will survive that first migration. 

Few adult seals on the beach 

Few if any females remain on the beach. They have left after nursing their pups for a month or so and mating with one or more bulls on the way back to the ocean. After not eating for the entire birth and nursing time, they are at their physiological low point. Time to get back in their ocean home and feed to build up some blubber. 

They will return in April and May for the annual molt. They lose their old skin, replacing it with new skin underneath, once a year. 

A few bulls sleep on the beach. They, too, are at their thinnest. They may have gone more than three months without food. It’s the price of eternal vigilance for a beachmaster. 

Stranded weaners 

Underweight and exhausted weaners may strand on local beaches. If you see one on the beach, you can report it to the Marine Mammal Center 24-hour hotline, 415-289-7325 (SEAL). They will send out a team to evaluate it and rescue it if necessary.