In 1892 a Smithsonian expedition landed on Guadalupe Island off Baja California and found eight northern elephant seals. They were believed to be the last of their kind. The species had been hunted through the 1800s for the oil in its blubber, and by the turn of the century most people assumed it was gone.
Mexico counted 264 seals on the island in 1922 and outlawed killing them, stationing a garrison to enforce the ban. The United States added protection with the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972. Today’s population, which NOAA Fisheries conservatively estimated at around 85,000 animals in 2013, descends entirely from those few hundred survivors in Mexico.
A colony that built itself
The Piedras Blancas rookery, on a stretch of Highway 1 between Cambria and Big Sur, is one of the most visible results of that recovery. In 1990 fewer than two dozen seals appeared on the beach. About 400 came to molt the following spring. The first pup was born there in February 1992, roughly 50 pups arrived in 1993, and by 1996 the colony had reached about 1,000 animals.
In recent years, according to Friends of the Elephant Seal, the nonprofit that formed in 1997 to run the viewing area, more than 25,000 elephant seals have arrived along an eight-mile stretch of coastline each year.
The animals are enormous. Adult males can top 13 feet and weigh close to 4,400 pounds. Females run about 10 feet and up to 1,300 pounds. Between visits to the beach they dive to depths of 1,000 to 2,500 feet, staying down for 20 to 30 minutes at a time.
Watching from the boardwalk
A fenced boardwalk sits on a bluff about 20 feet above the beach, and volunteer docents are on hand daily. The viewing areas are open every day with no fees and no reservations. Late January brings births, early May is molting season, and late October is when juveniles haul out.
It is one of the few places in the world where a species that was down to a handful of animals can be watched by the thousands from a roadside pullout, with pups and all.
Sources
- Friends of the Elephant Seal, History of the Piedras Blancas colony
- PBS SoCal, A brief history of the elephant seals at Piedras Blancas (Jan. 2015)
- NOAA Fisheries, Northern Elephant Seal
- Friends of the Elephant Seal, visitor information
