We woke up to walk out to the beach and see if any elephant seals were out, but only piles of kelp and a few fisherman.
I wasn’t that excited about going on the tour, as I was antsy to get down to Ventura. But it was quite beautiful up there. It was really fun imagining being there for a formal gathering dressed to the 9s. The outdoor pool was so inviting I had to tell myself “no” it is not worth getting it kicked out for to just a dive in once…at least not with the kids in tow 😉
So it ended up being more fun than I thought it would be.
When we got back to the RV and had lunch we drove up the few miles to the elephant seals beach.
Such cute little giant fat things they are. Its not hard to sit there for a long time just watching them asleep while occasionally scratching themselves, opening their eyes to look at you or simply rearranging and moving directly on top of one their neighbors. We even got to see a mom with her 6 day old pup.
Pups usually weigh about 30 to 40 pounds at birth. The mother stays with them for 30 days nursing them. At the end of the 30 days the pub weighs about 300 pounds. The Mom transfers 1/3 of her bodyweight to her pup. All this while she’s fasting.
At the end of the 30 days the mom mates with the alpha and returns to the sea. Interestingly there is delayed “implantation” of the baby or “blastocyst”. This helps ensure that the mother is able to regain her fat before she cares for another offspring and that the baby will be born the following year when the mom goes to shore during the winter birthing/mating season. Otherwise they are out to sea. Females return one other time of year to molt in April and males do as well in May.
When the elephant seals return to sea males and females go in different directions. Males go up along the coast all the way to Alaska. Females tend to go directly west into the middle of the ocean.
Data shows that females typically do three dives in an hour going all the way down to about 2500 feet on average looking for food. Once a day they take an hour long dive and go all the way down to 4500 – 6000 feet below sea level. It is thought that perhaps they sleep during the descent.
Elephant seals have the most amount of hemoglobin for any mammal. Another interesting fact from scientific data is that when returning to the surface elephant seals O2 levels can be as low as 5%. To put this in perspective humans once they get below 92% it is considered low.
Then we drove down in Morro Bay and camped at Montaña de Oro state park on the beach.