Entangled seal eludes help

 He resisted and escaped from those who would free him

In October, Friends of the Elephant Seal docents saw a seal with an entanglement around his neck on the beach at Piedras Blancas. He was at the far south end, difficult to observe. But that plastic was cutting into his neck.

“It’s always really tough to see these cases come up in the rookery,” said Aliah Meza, operations manager for San Luis Obispo Operations in Morro Bay.

Response begins

The Marine Mammal Center responded by sending observers, to determine how to help this deal in distress. When he moved to the north beach in the first week of November, observers got a better look. It was a plastic packing strap.

On Monday, November 4, the seal was easily visible on the north beach. I got some good photos, and encouraged a visitor with a long-lens camera to take some photos and submit them to TMMC.

A young family visiting, with two young daughters, were concerned abut the entanglement. The father offered to scale the fence and go down and cut it off.

I cautioned that it’s more difficult than it looks. He’s a pretty big seal. TMMC estimated he weighs around 260-330 pounds. It’s also illegal. Better to wait for the trained rescuers.

But I assured them that everyone at the bluff is concerned, and will take action to help that seal.

Better information makes better plans

Clearer photos of the entanglement help TMMC staff to make a plan that stands the best chance of success. The TMMC team went out with their own camera, to assess the beach surroundings.

“Once we got those details, we wrote up our plan,” Meza said. The plan was approved by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, giving them permission to go onto the beach and attempt the rescue from this human-caused threat.

Photo by Laurie Miller, c The Marine Mammal Center

Approaching a seal to remove an entanglement is tricky. First, it must be safe for the team members to make an approach. It has to consider the animal’s safety as well as the people’s safety.

“You never know what a wild animal is going to do,” she said.

Fall juvenile haul-out is a good time of year for a rescue. Fewer animals are on the beach, and those that are there are smaller, younger seals. No aggressive bulls.

“That minimizes the potential risk to other animals,” she said. “We have to consider all the contingencies that can happen.

Photo by Laurie Miller, c The Marine Mammal Center

The plan takes shape

The team was ready to go on Wednesday, November 6. By then, the seal had moved back to the south beach.

“Circumstances change daily, hour to hour,” she said. “We had a detailed plan for a different location. We had to think on our feet. Our field response team is very well trained.”

The team included three rescuers on the beach and others on the bluff, to monitor safety and take notes and photos.

They planned to confine the seal behind herding boards, then use a hook knife attached to a pole to cut the strap. They wouldn’t have to sedate the seal to immobilize him. That gets more complicated, requiring a veterinarian to oversee the process, and monitoring until the seal is fully awake.

“The animal is so large, we can’t put it in a carrier and remove it to our hospital,” she said.

It only takes one cut. But plastic is tough, and this seal was having none of it.

“He was pretty alert,” she said. “He was too active, and returned to the ocean.”

They’ll try again

Rescue attempts often don’t succeed on the first try. The plan for this seal is in place with NOAA approval, so the TMMC team is ready to go if anyone reports him on the beach.

Entangled seals can be fdifficult to identify from the bluff. Check the photo to see where he is.

If you see him, call 415-289-7325 and give the reference number 3348 to identify this seal.

As soon as the seal comes back to the beach, they’ll try again to remove the strap, before it causes permanent damage to organs. As it is, this seal will have a scar from it forever.

“These entanglements show the interconnectedness of humans and oceans,” Meza said. “It’s important for us to prevent single use plastics from entering the ocean.”

TMMC has more information about ocean trash on its website, https://www.marinemammalcenter.org/science-conservation/conservation/ocean-trash

 

 

 

 

All Hail, Returning Heroes!

 
When will the first bull arrive?

Friends of the Elephant Seal holds a contest every year, to guess when the first bull will arrive for the breeding season. Submit your guess here. Enter the First Bull contest here! (mailchi.mp)

The prize is the satisfaction of guessing right, and being praised by FES members and elephant seal admirers. Which is the main point, and the most fun!

Surfing in

The arrival is typically quiet, as a bull surfs in on a wave. He’ll galumph a few times onto the beach, then slump down. His huge body, supported by buoyancy in the water, now feels the weight of gravity. Transition to living on land is difficult.

The remaining seals on the beach are juveniles who haven’t yet departed after their fall haul-out. The arrival of mature bulls usually clears nearly all of them off the beach.

The juveniles have rested on the beach since September. Time now for them to go on their second migration of the year. They will forage and grow bigger, become more mature. Females may enter the breeding population, getting pregnant for the first time. Young males will return next year, with the oldest joining the mature bulls and taking a place in the dominance hierarchy.

Bulls bellow

After the shock of arriving on the beach, bulls announce themselves. They are among the loudest animals on earth. They need to be. A bull needs his threat vocalization, also called a clap-threat or a belch-roar, to intimidate opponents far and wide. The threat can carry around 75 feet, over the background noise of wind and waves. I’ve heard bellows echoing farther than that, an eerie call as darkness covers the beach. At a recent evening event at the Piedras Blancas light station, the elephant seal calls added to the sense of being in a strange other world.

A bull will raise himself up, his chest shield thrust forward, holding himself up on his flippers, open his mouth and let ‘er rip. Each bull has an individual call, identifying him to other bulls. If they’ve fought before, no need to fight again. They establish themselves in the dominance hierarchy. They can remember who beat who for years.

As the elephant seals have increased in numbers, bulls’ calls have become more complex. This may have happened because of the larger numbers, and the need to identify themselves as individuals.

Dominance

Only the dominant bulls, the beachmasters, get to breed, so there’s a lot at stake. By the peak of the breeding season in January and February, around 235 beachmasters will reign over harems of 30-40 females at Piedras Blancas.

The bulls are at their largest physical bulk now, after months of feeding along the North American continental shelf. They’ll need it to get through to March without eating.

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.

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!

Every bull on the beach is a survivor in a tough world. Only about one percent of male pups born reach breeding age. Surviving is essential, and those tough enough and lucky enough will have two to four good years to breed.

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, but they fight to establish the dominance hierarchy. It’s relatively stable, but always subject to change. As new bulls arrive, and bulls move from beach to beach, any beachmaster may be defeated.

The dominance hierarchy dictates 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 lose his place in the dominance hierarchy. A deposed bull may fall so low in the dominance hierarchy that he loses all breeding rights that season.

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 hierarchy. Lower ranking bulls sneak around the harem and try to mate with females. They sometimes get away with it.

Fights can be brief encounters, an exchange of threats, or they can be violent struggles that go on for half an hour or more. Bulls may start fighting on the beach and continue fighting in the water.

They rear up and rip and tear at each other. The chest shield provides some protection, a calloused area that bleeds but is not life-threatening. Wounds can be severe, but immediate death is rare. Some bulls may escape to the sea and die of their wounds later.

King Tides

King Tides are the highest tides of the year. They are predictable, happening when the sun, moon, and Earth align to exert the greatest gravitational pull on the ocean. This year they will occur on the mornings of November 15-17 and December 13-15.

California Coastal Commission invites the public to submit photos that illustrate how far the water reaches on those tides. Photos must be dated and timed, taken as close to high tide time as possible.

Check out the places that have been photographed in the past. https://coastalcomm.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=f5652282f2c84e3194a8f1e4af9e15ba  Plan your photography for those and locations that haven’t been photographed on those dates. There are gaps north of the Piedras Blancas elephant seal viewpoint (one of my photos from last year); between Cambria and Morro Bay; and south of Los Osos. Think about areas that are subject to flooding and erosion, and places where high water levels are obvious against familiar landmarks such as cliffs, rocks, roads, buildings, bridge supports, sea walls, staircases, and piers. https://www.coastal.ca.gov/kingtides/ 

Visiting the Viewpoint

The arrival of the full-grown bulls heralds the most exciting season at the rookery. The parking lot has been maintained in good condition. Friends of the Elephant Seal docents are available every day to answer questions.

Check the live webcam to see what’s happening on the beach. https://elephantseal.org/live-view/  Maybe today’s the day to drive up Highway 1 to see the seals. Highway 1 is open only as far north as Lucia Lodge. It remains closed due to the Regent Slide between Lucia Lodge and Esalen Institute.

Bring your camera.  Always open, always free. One of the spectacular advantages of California’s Central Coast.