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March 30, 2007

Northern Elephant Seals: A Weaner Wonderland

The mating season of the Northern Elephant Seal is coming to a close.

The last big males have been defending their harems for the past three months without food or water. They have lost more than a third of their body weight and look rather deflated. The last females have weaned their pups and lost about half of their weight in 28 days. They mate with the alpha bull of the harem and take off to the waters north of Hawaii to feed again. Nothing left for the males to mate with, so they have left as well.

What's left is what the Año Nuevo park rangers affectionately call "A Weaner Wonderland".

The ugly looking image below is a ridiculously sloppy panorama I made from 24 individual images of weaners playing in the tidepools during an exceptionally low tide that occured last week. If you click on the panorama, it links to a somewhat larger version (14mp, about 7000x2000 pixels) which you can explore more and see what the individual weaners are up to.

Posted by sorsha at March 30, 2007 10:40 AM