Elephant seals in the Point Reyes National Seashore did not escape the impacts of recent storms, which swept dozens of pups out to sea and muddied survey efforts by marine ecologists. “These last few storms really hit the seals hard,” said Sarah Codde, who leads annual elephant seal counts in the park. “There’s a good chance seals are in new areas and we know there are more to come in this count.”
Ms. Codde said that although current numbers are unreliable, an estimated 37 of the 50 pups born before the storms were taken out by the surf. Yet that is just a fraction of the number of pups usually born on Point Reyes, where pupping season peaks in late January and yields as many as 1,200 pups. Most newborns, at just two or three weeks old, are still nursing and unable to swim.
Last Thursday, Ms. Codde visited seal colonies at the Point Reyes Headlands, South Beach and Drakes Beach, observing around 420 females, 110 pups and 150 males. In recent years, Drakes Beach became a hotspot for seals seeking refuge from winds that normally hit the headlands. But after January’s storms brought winds from the south, conditions changed everywhere, Ms. Codde said. She believes seals may have ventured into new areas.
“Normally when we have storms, it just hits the headlands, but with these storms, since they are coming from the south, it hit all the colonies and Drakes Beach especially hard,” she said. After storms drove the seals from Drakes Beach into the parking lot and onto ice plant patches, the park closed the beach and the access road.
Christine Beekman, a spokeswoman for the park, said both will likely open this weekend. The stretches of beach from the Lifeboat Station to Chimney Rock, and from the southern end of South Beach to the lighthouse, are also closed to protect seals. The park encourages visitors to go to the elephant seal overlook at Chimney Rock, and to stay at least 25 feet away from seals—or more than double that for a pup accompanied by its mother.
This is the first of the elephant seals’ biannual visits to the seashore. In February, when pups are weaned, the females and males will mate once more before returning to the deep ocean. Males will head north toward the Aleutian Islands, while females will largely stay further south of them in the open ocean. In April, they return to molt.
Additional storm-related closures in the seashore include the Kelham Beach Trail, where 12 feet of steps were swept out, along with North Beach, Mount Vision Road and the Palomarin road beyond Commonweal. To keep up to date with closures, visit www.nps.gov and search “Point Reyes.”
This article was corrected on Jan. 24. Female northern elephant seals do not travel toward waters around the Hawaiian Islands after pupping, instead traveling farther north.