February 28:
Guided elephant seal walk at
Año Nuevo State Preserve!
First of all, the California coastline in general is pretty awesome:
At the time that we went, the females had all left for the sea to eat, abandoning their pups on the shore. This process automatically upgrades them to "weaners". Our docent's talk of weaner this and weaner that was not met without the occasional stifled snicker. Also, I've always imagined weaning to be a more gentle, nurturing process.
We saw some of these weaners lying around looking like warts on the dunes:
They like to come together into groups, called "weaner pods".
Anyways, cute!
We saw a couple big males around, too. Elephant seals are known to be very aggressive and have intense fights for beach dominance. Their blubber is too thick for them to kill each other, but they do mess up each others' skin. After several fights, the skin in their neck area turns into a protective plate of scar tissue.
Today, they were all pretty inactive:
It was a particularly warm day, which contributes to their inactivity. They are very well insulated to withstand the cold open ocean, but this makes heat dissipation a problem while they're on land. Occasionally you'll see them flipping sand over themselves:
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