It’s the Busy Season at Seals’ Maternity Ward

You hear the bull elephant seals at Northern California’s Ano Nuevo State Reserve before you see them.

As you start along the tour trail leading across the dunes toward the sea, an odd drumming rises above the sound of the distant surf. This noise, you soon learn, is not drumming at all, but challenging roars by big males proclaiming, “I can lick any bull on the beach!”

As you cross the sands you learn next that gentle snores as well as roars are characteristic of the elephant seal rookery. The first bull encountered along the trail undoubtedly will be a three-ton lump of supine, drowsy flesh burrowed into a secluded wallow.

When you stop to watch this behemoth, while standing the 20 feet away from him prescribed by law, only the twitching of whiskers and the lazy half-opening of one big eye will belie his image of indifferent torpor.

Touring the Rookery

Roars and torpor are both key elements in the cycle of birth and breeding you witness during tours to the rookery at Ano Nuevo from mid-December through April 30.

The northern elephant seal, known as Mirounga angustirostris in scientific circles, was hunted to near-extinction for his oil-rich blubber. The species, now protected, returned to Ano Nuevo Island, about 55 miles south of San Francisco, in 1955, and the first pup was born there in 1961.

Four years later elephant seal bulls “hauled out” (came ashore) half a mile away on the mainland at Ano Nuevo Point. In January, 1975, a pup was born on the mainland; the largest count there on any one day last winter was 547 pups.

The island is closed to visitors, but the mainland rookery is open daily during the breeding season for closely controlled reservations-only tours led by volunteer docents. The numbers of animals and the activities observed during tours vary from week to week.

Chest to Chest

The bulls begin arriving in late November. They snooze while awaiting the females, and bold, aggressive ones occasionally lift their pendulous snouts to roar challenges. Some clash in chest-to-chest combat.

The battles help determine who’s king of the dunes, or in scientific terms, the dominance hierarchy for breeding. The torpor between roaring bouts and fights conserves energy, a precious saving for animals who will not eat for up to 90 days.

The first pregnant females haul out around mid-December, with the flow of arrivals peaking by about mid-January. They give birth three to six days after arrival, and settle in to nurse their pups.

Meanwhile, the dominant bulls stake out harems and defend them against other suitors. So if you tour from mid-January through mid-February you’ll probably find the action and cacophony of the rookery at its peak as bulls roar and clash, the females adding to the din with hisses, grunts and cries while their pups whine.

A pup nurses for about a month and makes prodigious growth gains on its mother’s rich milk, usually quadrupling its 75-pound birth weight. But then, abruptly, a pup’s life becomes a dog’s life as its mother weans it, mates and returns to the sea.

Abandoned pups move inland away from the bulls, who are in the habit of trampling small objects in their paths. So if you tour in February, you’ll doubtlessly pass big-eyed, wistful pups huddled in “weaner pods” for protection and company.

As the female population dwindles, the males begin to leave--by mid-March the weaners have the rookery almost to themselves. They shed their black baby fur for a silver coat, learn to swim in the shallow waters and one by one head out to sea. Most are gone by the end of April.

If you miss the elephant seals in the winter, you can see them at Ano Nuevo during molting season. The females return to molt in April or early May, the bulls follow in July and August, and juveniles may be seen ashore in spring and fall. You need no reservations to tour in these later seasons, but docents are on hand to answer questions and to make sure that visitors keep their distance from the seals.

Ano Nuevo Island and surrounding waters also host three relatives of the elephant seal, the Steller sea lion, present around mid-August; the California sea lion, a summer and fall visitor, and the harbor seal, a year-round resident.

Ano Nuevo State Reserve is off California 1 about 55 miles south of San Francisco, 30 miles south of Half Moon Bay and 20 miles north of Santa Cruz.

Reservations to tour the rookery are available through Ticketron. Tours operate daily, and weekend tours normally book weeks ahead of time.

Tours, limited to 20 people each, leave from the visitor center every 15 minutes between 8:45 or 9 a.m. and 2:30 or 2:45 p.m. They last 2 1/2 hours and involve a three-mile round-trip walk. Once your tour group leaves the staging area you must stay with the group. Tours depart rain or shine, and late arrivals forfeit their places on tours.

Tickets are $5, including service charge, and all sales are final. Call (213) 410-1062 in Southern California. Allow about 10 days for tickets to reach you.

The full story on elephant seals is in “Mirounga, a Guide to Elephant Seals” by Sheri Howe. It’s $4.95 at the Ano Nuevo visitor center or can be ordered from Frank S. Balthis, P.O. Box 255, Davenport, Calif. 95017.