Coast & Ocean Magazine Spring 1998

Learning to Live with Giants

Elephant Seals Get Right-of-Way at Piedras Blancas

SARAH CHRISTIE

MARINE BIOLOGIST Bud Laurent never suspected he had the gift of interspecies communication, but these days he has to wonder. If he had sensed such latent talents back in 1988, when he was working for the California Department of Fish and Game, he might not have been so cavalier as to tell a young female elephant seal he was releasing after rehabilitation: "Now go out there and tell all your friends about this place."

See What Kind of Tern Did You Say That Was?

Those words have come back to haunt him. The lone seal who washed up on the beach at Morro Bay ten years ago, sick and disoriented, was indeed followed by more of her kind. As many as 5,000 now arrive twice a year at Piedras Blancas, on San Luis Obispo County's north coast, to mate and give birth. Each season their numbers grow. This year they spilled over onto the two most popular beaches on that stretch of coast - Arroyo Laguna and San Simeon Cove - and are even hauling out at the campground at San Simeon State Beach. Laurent, now a county supervisor whose district includes this coastal zone, has been forced to grapple with a problem that has reached critical proportions.
The remarkable rebound of the elephant seal is both a victory and a liability, an opportunity and a headache, to residents and government officials. These giant marine mammals had been hunted to the brink of extinction in the 1800s for the oil in their blubber. They began their comeback after Mexico extended official protection to them in 1922, followed a few years later by the United States. About 60,000 elephant seals now range from Mexico to the Gulf of Alaska, coming ashore in the spring to molt and in the winter to breed and pup.
The best-known colony in California is at Año Nuevo State Reserve in San Mateo County, but the population at Piedras Blancas now rivals it in size. Unlike Año Nuevo, however, the Piedras Blancas shoreline is not a public wildlife preserve - it is owned by the Hearst Corporation. Until last year, access from Highway 1 had been informal and uncontrolled. Even now visitors can step from their cars and stand within a few feet of the animals. Not surprisingly, Piedras Blancas has become a destination for school field trips and tourists.

At right: At times, elephant seals may seem inert and indifferent.
Below: Breeding males are loud and agressive.

Photo by Kip Evans

Elephant seals spend over half their lives at sea, typically staying 20 minutes at depths of 1,000 to 2,000 feet, plying the deepest channels of the Pacific for up to six months at a stretch.

Photo by Kip Evans
Clashes and Collisions
ELEPHANT SEALS ARE BY TURNS the most remote and the most accessible of all marine mammals. They spend over half their lives at sea, diving deeper than any other pinniped species in search of squid, skates, rays, and deep-sea fish. Typically staying 20 minutes at depths of 1,000 to 2,000 feet, they ply the deepest channels of the Pacific for up to six months at a stretch. When they do come ashore they seem almost oblivious to the presence of humans.
      It is not uncommon to see windsurfers, dogs, and families picking their way past densely packed molting bodies as if the seals were so much driftwood. Seeing them at rest, podlike and immobile (except in mating season), many tourists don't realize that, when provoked, these giants can propel themselves across the sand with the speed of a galloping thoroughbred. Some have learned the hard way. A German tourist was bitten on the backside trying to outrun an immature bull a few years ago, and a woman who had strayed too close to a pup was knocked to the ground by a protective female.
      Last autumn, a volunteer-based educational group, Bay Net, the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Volunteer Network, launched a docent program at the elephant seals' haul-out site at the request of San Luis Obispo County, and with the help of a $70,000 grant from the Resources Agency.
      More than 100 potential volunteers came to the first meeting, in November, and 30 were selected for the first training class. The 32-hour training touched on natural history, legal issues, public safety, and the psychology of interacting with visitors. The first graduates hit the beaches the day after Thanksgiving and, that first weekend, talked with 1,084 visitors. "We aren't beach police," local coordinator Susan McDonald explained. "We are here to educate people and teach them why the seals and all marine wildlife deserve to be treated with respect."
      As the new docents soon learned, however, their own education had just begun. They were unprepared for the El Niño winter storms. In January, 30-foot waves annihilated the narrow beaches north of San Simeon at the height of breeding and pupping season. Newborns, unable to swim, were washed out to sea. Frenzied cows, usually perceived as maternally indifferent, tried in vain to shield their pups with their bodies and shepherd them to higher ground, but waves overwhelmed them. The bulls, meanwhile, relentlessly continued to pursue the cows.
      The drama was played out in front of hundreds of tourists. Docents could only stand by helplessly, some with tears in their eyes, and advise onlookers not to interfere. "It was heart-wrenching, but there was quite literally nothing we could do," said Maryanne Gail, a docent who lives in Cambria. "Our whole message is about not interfering. Besides, our own lives would have been at risk down there on the beach."
      By mid-March, about 100 of the estimated 1,750 new pups had died.

Photo by Kip Evans
These tourists obviously don't realize what can happen to people who harass elephant seals.

Getting the Message
MOTHER NATURE CAN BE A HARSH teacher, but she also touches lives in profoundly positive ways, the docents have discovered. The Piedras Blancas site affords some of the most intimate, impressive, and accessible wildlife viewing anywhere in the country, and seals serve as goodwill ambassadors as only animals can.
One docent reported seeing a blue-haired teenager poking an adolescent male seal with a stick. Intervening in the nonconfrontational manner he had been taught, the docent explained to the young man why this was a poor idea. The youth, a visitor from Australia, followed the docent back up the beach, apologizing all the way, and spent the rest of the morning on the bluffs, observing from a respectful distance. Before he left, he thanked the docent and told him, "I'll never look at a wild animal the same way again."

Sarah Christie is a freelance writer and aide to San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Bud Laurent.

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