Hunted nearly to extinction, northern elephant seals, native to the waters off the West Coast, now number more than 175,000.
“They were thought to be extinct,” said Adam Ratner, associate director of conservation education at the Sausalito-based Marine Mammal Center, an animal hospital that cares for wild elephant seals. “We basically had a second chance with this species — and what’s amazing about marine mammals and other wildlife is how resilient they are.”Northern elephant seals, which can weigh up to 5,000 pounds and are named for the males’ distinctive trunk-like noses, live in the eastern Pacific Ocean. They spend most of their time diving for fish and squid in the deep seas between Alaska and Mexico but come to land to breed and molt.The seals were hunted so much for their blubber, coveted by humans as a source of fuel, that between 1884 and 1892, not a single northern elephant seal was seen anywhere in the world, according to the National Park Service.Then a small colony of elephant seals was found on Guadalupe Island off the coast of Baja California in Mexico. After laws were enacted in Mexico and the United States banning hunting of elephant seals, that colony — estimated to have dwindled to fewer than 100 animals — was able to keep reproducing, and the population rebounded.Elephant seals started popping up in places they had long abandoned or had never been sighted before, as they sought more beach space for their annual breeding. Elephant seals recolonized the Channel Islands in California following federal protection in the 1930s, and were spotted at Año Nuevo, along the wind-swept San Mateo coast, in 1955. In later decades, they spread to Point Reyes in Marin County, the Big Sur Coast and farther south toward San Luis Obispo.But there are new, growing problems linked to climate change.When atmospheric rivers slammed California in January, an estimated 100 newborn seals at Point Reyes National Seashore died, as king tides overwhelmed the beaches. Pups don’t learn how to swim until they are a few months old, and many were too young when the storms hit, according to Sarah Codde, a marine ecologist at the park.Rising tides in general threaten the habitats of these animals, many of which breed on narrow beaches backed by steep cliffs, with little space to retreat from the water. After the January storms, many pregnant seals at Point Reyes moved to previously uninhabited beaches in the park, Codde said, but there are only so many easily accessible places to relocate to.Still, the elephant seal population is, for the most part, booming. There are now believed to be 175,000 of the seals worldwide, and they have even begun to occupy breeding grounds outside of what’s considered their historic range, including Humboldt County.Read More
