December 8

Our day at Hearst Castle was over but the day wasn’t. A short drive up the coast we arrive at the Piedras Blanco Rookery – home of the Elephant Seals. To read and learn about these seals is quite fascinating. Again, I will try to be brief. When we arrived, there were 150-200 seals. The males start arriving to this beach late November through December and the females mid December to mid January.  The males can get to be upwards of 5,000 lbs. (no I didn’t add a zero) whereas the females are up to 2,000 lbs. When they come to shore they fast from Nov to March(males) where the bulls can lose up to one ton of their weight. The females arrive pregnant from the previous Feb/Mar and give birth in the Jan-Feb months. The female will give birth to a 70 lb baby feeding it for 4 weeks where the infant will quadruple in size and the mother will lose up to 40% of her weight. After 4 weeks, the female will mate several times and shortly after leave the coast. Family life is over. The infant is now on its own! The males will stay around until all females have left then head to the sea. During their time at the rookery, the seals are quite social but once they leave, they are out to sea on their own, especially the males. For the next 8-9 months they will dive and eat usually never coming onto land. They will dive several thousand feet, staying at the surface for only a few short minutes at a time.

Ok, thus ends today’s lesson!

From the rookery at around 3:00pm, we headed south about 50 miles towards out next week stay at Pismo Beach.

That’s the daily poop!