A Valentine's Day trip with the sixth graders to see the Elephant seals do their thing at Ano Nuevo State Reserve. It was an incredible day as we drove down highway one to the reserve where we met our tour guide, Susan McConnell, who as it turns out, is a dev bio professor at Stanford. Small small world. During the winter, Ano Nuevo is the largest mainland colony of breeding Northern Elephant seals in the world, which is pretty amazing.
What is perhaps more interesting if the complex social structures that govern the mating season on these beaches. The male seals arrive at Ano Nuevo in early December where they fight it out for dominance and eventually settle into a variety of roles including Alpha males, Beta males, Loser males and Sneaker males. As the females arrive on the beach later in December, the Alpha males group the females into harems and constantly fight to maintain control of this group of females. The Beta males are those who are not quite strong enough to become Alpha males, but have successfully fought for the right to remain on the main beaches. They can often be seen encircling the harems and often trying to mate with the females while the Alpha males are distracted. Loser males are banished to Loser Beach, at some distance from the females.
As the females arrive on the beach, they first give birth to their pups, which can be seen in photos as the small black blobs. The pups will nurse for about a month, after which they will be known as Weaners (best name ever..). After they give birth, the females are almost immediately impregnated by the Alpha male and the whole process starts over again. While effective, i also found the social structures to be really disturbing. The females choose remain in the harem for protection from the males that surround the group and females attempting to reenter the water are often gang raped by the beta males that sit between them in the water. yuk. Males are huge and extremely aggressive, often running over and killing pups and weaners as they try to get to the females. Despite these drawbacks, it was a really cool trip and one that i would definitely recommend.
Susan introduces herself to the group
The beach at Ano Nuevo. In this photo you can see what is probably two harems of females with the Alpha males mixed in and the Beta males around the outside. Thank god we have already taught the kids sex ed as elephant seal sex was prominent activity of the day.
Two bulls picking a fight while a weaner scoots to get out of the way
Many pups and weaners do not survive their first few months of life. Many are crushed by the males, are separated from their mother, or are not able to survive once weaned.
A male showing off on the beach
A beta bull lounges in a pool to help him cool off- perhaps in more ways than one
Best part of the day? Rolling down the sand dunes
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