My Last Day

Monday was my last chance to combat my new-found fear of elephant seals. One of the guys I’d been chatting with on Saturday night told me how to watch their behaviour and recognise when I was getting too close so I headed straight for the beach after breakfast. I tried getting close but found it really hard. Just having one nonchalantly look at me made me feel nervous. Luckily the guy who’d given me the advice was on the beach and let me join him so I got a master-class in elephant seal behaviour. We got close to a female and pup on the edges of a harem and she raised her head and bared her teeth at us so we stopped. He said about how to let them see you and approach slowly, letting them realise you weren’t a threat. Once she got used to us we crept forward and got some great shots of her and her pup. There were a few satellite males around, including one that decided to come up really close to us. Seeing 4 tonnes of blubber, muscle and teeth thundering towards you is enough to weaken the strongest knees but we held our ground and he stopped a few metres away from the edge of the harem.

We got pretty damn close to him as we knew he wouldn’t get any closer for fear of really antagonising the beachmaster. As it was he decided the satellite male was getting a bit too cocky and lumbered in our direction but settled within the harem, close to where we were standing. Being caught between two males wasn’t a great position to be in so we backed away.

Two satellite males on the other side of the harem decided to have a go at each other which was exciting, although if it was any closer I think I’d have run away!

Watching the males was fascinating. There’s a Terry Pratchett book called ‘The Unadulterated Cat’ which describes a game called ‘cat chess’ where the participants spend their time trying to see all the other cats in the neighbourhood while avoiding being seen. The male elephant seals seemed to be playing this game! One would move towards the harem and all the others would shuffle position. The beachmaster would change his position slightly while still remaining firmly inside the harem, daring them to approach and rubbing their faces in the fact that it was his harem all at the same time.
The females were seemingly oblivious to all this, spending much of their time lying on their sides to allow their pups to suckle. Occasionally they’d move and their pup would run after them which was quite cute to see.

The pups seemed to divide their time between feeding and exploring their bodies. This little guy particularly liked to hug himself!

You can see the umbilical cord still attached. As they got older this got tattier but apparently takes several months before it’s completely destroyed. He’s probably only a day or two old. Pups were still being born and there were a couple of pregnant females still in this harem but actually seeing a birth requires more patience and luck than I had.

As the morning wore on I got more and more confident around them. They weren’t really bothered by me and as long as they didn’t see me as a threat let me get incredibly close. I still had complete respect for them but didn’t see them as quite so scary as I did at the beginning of the day. One incident really brought home to me how generally placid they are.

You see, there was this tussacbird. Tussacbirds are about the size and colour of a female blackbird and this particular bird had a taste for elephant seal noses. It took a particular fancy to the nose of the beachmaster and would peck around his nostrils, I suppose for dead skin and stuff. This was slightly irritating to the beachmaster and he would raise his head from time to time and try to shake the bird away. The bird didn’t care. He’d take a few steps back when the male moved but as soon as he was still again it would move forward and recommence pecking. The beachmaster, this 4 tonne hulk, was clearly annoyed but there was nothing it could do against 100 g or so of determined bird!

And so it was that in the space of 2 days I had developed, and cured, my fear of elephant seals!