Recent History of Elephant Seals
( Click any photo to enlarge )
In the late 1800s, the northern elephant seal was thought to have been hunted to extinction by shore whalers and seal hunters, These easily killed giant mammals were hunted for the high quality oil in their blubber. The blubber from an average-sized large male elephant seal was often estimated to yield as much as twenty-five gallons of oil.
It is believed that somehow about one hundred elephant seals escaped the butchery of the hunters and managed to survive on the Mexican island of Guadalupe. Then in 1922, the Mexican government declared them protected and banned the hunting of them. A few years later, the US government followed suit when elephant seals started showing up in California coastal waters.
Since that time, the population of the northern elephant seal has grown tremendously.
Elephant seals were first sighted on Ano Nuevo Island in 1955, and in 1961, the first pup was born there.
By 1965, this island was getting too crowded, so the elephant seals started looking for new beaches to colonize. Then in 1975, the first known mainland pup was born at Ano Nuevo State Park.
As the years roll by, and the elephant seal population grows by leaps and bounds, the elephant seals keep having to find new beaches as their existing ones become overpopulated.
In 1990, a dozen or so elephant seals decided to form a new colony just south of the Piedras Blancas lighthouse, with the first pup being born there the following year, 1991. Since that time, the colony has grown exponentially, causing the elephant seals to keep expanding this colony by taking over new beaches along the central California coast as their number increase each year.
In 2009, it is estimated that there are over 200,000 elephant seals calling many of the beaches of North America home during their shore time each year.