Elephant seal pupping season is underway at Point Reyes and will continue through mid-March. The season is a rare opportunity for visitors to catch sight of the animals, for they mostly live in the open ocean and come onto shore only three times a year.

This year, roughly 1,000 of the giant seals, which sometimes weigh up to 5,000 pounds, can be spotted at Chimney Rock. Ranger Supervisor Heidi Niehaus has organized a 25-member team of volunteer docents to assist visitors, and last month Americorps workers built a trail from the parking lot to the site.

Point Reyes National Seashore biologist Sarah Allen urged visitors to respect the signs that Niehaus has posted that warn visitors to stay at least 50 to 100 feet away from the animals.

Pregnant females are particularly vulnerable to disturbance, and if threatened, they could leave the colony altogether, Allen warned.

Elephant seal bulls can be recognized by their large inflatable snouts. The females are generally more delicate, and range in color from silver gray to light brown. Pups weigh around 70 pounds at birth and are covered by a black coat of fur.

"These are remarkable animals," noted Allen. "They can dive up to a mile, and stay underwater for as long as two hours."

She added that biologists in 1988 tracked one elephant seal from the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California to Alaska's Bering Sea, a distance of over 4500 miles that the seal covered in two weeks.

The Point Reyes elephant seal colony started in 1981 with a male, female, and a pup. The colony has grown at a rate of six percent a year.

However, the colony is still relatively small. In contrast, there are several thousand animals at Año Nuevo reserve in San Mateo County, noted Allen.