SAN SIMEON: An Elephant Seal's Delight Part Three

Filed in archive on August 1, 2006

Mirounga angustirostris, or Northern Elephant Seals spend a large part of their year at rookeries like this one in San Simeon on the doorstep of the illustrious Big Sur. Males can grow up to fourteen feet and 5000 pounds! Females, although smaller are no slouches with the largest reaching twelve feet and 1800 pounds.




Eating small sharks, rays and other bottom feeders, the male Northern Elephant Seal makes astounding pilgrimages for food twice annually. Diving a typical depth of 1000-2000 feet for more than twenty minutes foraging the continental shelf for prey, they resurface for a quick breather lasting only two to four minutes. Then boom! Like John Madden, back down again for more.




Then flashback to me standing their with my camera watching these lazy, slumbering, farting, belching, bellowing, crawling, animals. I can understand why they were so crashed out and resting so fully and completely. If I dove that deep, for that long in the middle of the ocean for such long periods of time . . . why I would be tired too!

ER Harris