Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA -- We finally recovered Cheddar's tags...in Piedras Blancas. She's one odd seal. She spent a couple of weeks swimming within a few miles off Año Nuevo State Reserve and taunted us as we searched the beaches looking for her. Typically seals who are within 40 kilometers (24 miles) of Año Nuevo hit land the next morning. But day after day, Cheddar stayed just off shore. She never hit land! After scanning with the radio for her tag’s frequency, hiking the beaches, and sending out an E-Seal Team search party … we still couldn't find her.

Then Cheddar swam down the coast and spent weeks within a mile or two off Long Marine Lab at UC Santa Cruz where the TOPP E-Seal Team is based. This confused us even more. Then, after we spent days trying to figure out what this seal was doing, she swam straight to Piedras Blancas in only a day.

So, we thought we'd catch up with her on the same day that we drove to Piedras Blancas, near San Simeon, to recover tags from Clara. After the recovery, we searched the Piedras harems for our missing seal. We found her! But she looked pregnant, so we planned on keeping an eye on her movements and returning. But after a couple days, she went missing again. TOPP affiliates in Piedras couldn’t find her, and her tag was giving us all kinds of funny data that didn’t make sense. Was Cheddar back at sea? Was she lying on her tags creating bad satellite hits? Had she had her pup, or was she not pregnant? With this seal anything was possible.

Cheddar's tracks for this trip (above). She returned to the Mendocino Coast in Northern California to start her slow trip down to the waters off Año Nuevo where she spent quite a bit of time (below). After that she continued to Santa Cruz, ending her journey at Piedras Blancas.

After scratching our heads for a couple more weeks, we decided it was time for a trip south to find Cheddar. We found her in a large harem out of the public view, only a few hundred yards from Clara. Cheddar had a pup (another boy) that looked like he was about ten days to two weeks old. He weighed nearly 200 pounds! We recovered Cheddar's CTD satellite tag, radio tag, and time-depth-recorder tag with ease, collected measurements, and reunited her with her pup.

We've hit a milestone. We've removed all the tags from the 10 TOPP featured seals. But, fear not, Elephant Seals Homecoming Days isn't over: Penelope, Isabel, Clara, Cheddar, Myoceen, Guadalupe, Flora, Mukurma, Coya and Annie are all nursing their pups, will mate soon with the alpha males who do their best to chase off all other contenders (or they might mate with the male "sneakers" that undulate in when the alpha isn't looking) and will soon be heading back to sea, to have their first meal in more than a month. We'll continue to follow these seals, and we'll introduce you to our next group of E-Seals soon. We've been putting out new satellite tags on females...15 down and five to go.