Elephant seal pup

I spent most of my first half of college on the beach (off UCSB). One day I came across a huge seal hauled up on the sand. It was gianormous with great, big, brown eyes that were ringed with thick, white crust and a crusty nose. She just laid there and let me approach closer and closer until I was sitting right next to her. She was much bigger than a sea lion but I had a feeling she was young (baby face) and she had the HUGE eyes and short, broad, shovel head of an elephant seal, which made sense of her size (at least 300 pounds). Her crusty eyes and nose and lack of normal response told me she was very ill. I was also worried because she was located where there was a fair amount of surfer, dog and pass/fail student traffic.

This was many years ago. There were no cell phones. (Cordless phones were barely coming out.) There were no computers except in the Pentagon. No internet. No way to get all the amazing info that I can get now about any subject I need. I ran back to my apartment and started going through the phone book to find help for this big, sick baby. Who do you call about elephant seals? I tried a few numbers and got a couple of referrals including one to "the only guy licensed to handle marine mammals in the area." I called and left a message on his answering machine and ran back out to protect my seal pup.

She was in the exact same place. I sat there for an hour and then ran home to check my answering machine and then ran back to her and so on through the whole day except for a trip I made to the supermarket. I bought her some fish but she wouldn't eat it. I got all stinky and it drove the sea gulls mad. Sometimes she just laid there with her eyes open, sometimes she napped. I pet her, talked to her and tried to tempt her to eat the fish. I'm sure I tried to give her water, too. I don't remember doing that specifically but it's the kind of thing I do. It was cold and windy (March) and I stayed out there till about 7 in the evening.

I eventually gave up and went home for the night. I was freezing and very dejected about my poor pup. Finally, at around 11 o'clock, the marine mammal guy called me. I was thrilled! I told him what I knew and then he told me what I didn't know.

Turns out that elephant seal pups (which she was he surmised over the phone from my answers to his questions- "does it have ears?" "no" and so on) go through a weaning process when they are abandoned by their mothers and left to live off their fat while they molt a new fur coat and get hungry enough to finally go to sea and begin to hunt fish for themselves. The thick, white crust is how they rid themselves of excess salt and is completely normal. Their fearless and lazy lack of response is also typical though he assured me she could move very well and fast if she wanted to. I was still worried about her location and he agreed. He invited me to meet him and his crew out on the beach in the morning when he would load her onto a pick up truck and drive her up the coast to a less accessible beach. I was SO there.

He and two teenage boys were there in the morning and she WAS moving. She would rear up and tilt her head looking at us (the day before she just laid on her stomach all day) and she did that big, lumbering inch-worm thing they do in cranky circles on the beach. She was pissed. Even so, the four of us, using a big piece of plywood, herded her (eventually) into a net. She accepted defeat gracefully and went back to sleep. It took all our strength to dead lift her fat body off the sand and into the back of the pick up. We drove north up the coast and released her on a nice, secluded beach.

I don't have a picture of her but, with the kind assistance of Gill Sinclair, I've been given permission to use this photo, shot and copyrighted by Tricia Crighton. It looks just like what I remember.