It’s a very good time to be an elephant seal in California.
After two years of destructive storms that killed pups and muddied population surveys, the enormous species is having a historic population boom. And right now they are on their annual trek up California’s coastline to breed, give birth, get in loud fights, and lie in the sun.
At the Point Reyes National Seashore, about 50 miles from the Golden Gate, the pinnipeds are on full display, reaching peak numbers over the next two weeks.
“It’s totally a successful conservation story,” said Sarah Codde, a marine ecologist who runs the monitoring program for elephant seals in Point Reyes. Visitors to Drakes Beach this month will have the opportunity to see females give birth, witness the mayhem of males fighting, and hear the animals’ cacophony of noises, which range from a guttural, didgeridoo-esque belch to the cutesy squeals and shrieks of pups.
While it doesn’t have the largest colony of elephant seals in coastal California — San Simeon and Año Nuevo both have larger ones — Drakes Beach is closest to San Francisco and provides one of the most immersive settings. At Drakes, birthing females frequently get as close as 10 feet to the sidewalk, and more seals are arriving every day.
“There aren’t too many places in the world where you can really get this close,” Codde says.
Unlike harbor seals, whose statewide population declines over several years have alarmed and puzzled scientists, northern elephant seals are booming largely due to this season’s clement weather.
It’s a welcome change. In the past few years, atmospheric rivers in tandem with storm surges struck during the elephant seal birthing season, drowning dozens of pups that couldn’t yet swim and scattering populations.
That came as a major blow to a population that had been growing after a long period of decimation. For more than 150 years, elephant seals were absent from Point Reyes after being hunted to near extinction for their blubber. According to the National Park Service, there were fewer than 1,000 in the world by 1910. After the Mexican and U.S. governments banned hunting elephant seals in the 1920s, the population began growing worldwide. As of 2022, an estimated 4,000 called Point Reyes home. It was difficult for researchers to get a good population count in the following two years because of the bad weather interrupting the breeding season.
But the elephant seals have been spared from disaster this year. Storms struck during November, when the seals had not yet returned from the deep ocean to breed on land, leading to greater numbers.
More than a quarter of the Point Reyes elephant seal population can be found at Drakes Beach — the central rookery of the area. Codde estimates that 1,200 elephant seals are there, with 320 pups born as of the second week of January
If you go to see them in the next few weeks, you’ll witness a lot of lethargy. The beach dumplings spend most of their days asleep. But while the lifestyle may appear enviable, their lives are unforgiving.
Males can live up to 12 years and females up to 18 years, but only 16% of seals survive to the age of 4, according to an NRC Research paper.
“It’s a rough life,” said Codde. “The pups are not taught anything — the moms don’t take them into the water, so they don’t know how to swim and don’t know how to eat and have to teach themselves.”
This is the first of the elephant seals’ biannual visits to the seashore. In February, when pups are weaned, the females and males will mate once more before returning to the deep ocean. Males will head north toward the Aleutian Islands, while females will largely stay farther south in the open ocean. In April, they will return to Point Reyes to shed their skin — a much less adorable site than the pups frolicking now.