Melinda Fowler, UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab -- The female elephant seals we tagged this winter are returning early, and our satellite tag recoveries are starting off with a bang! Satellite tags were deployed on 23 adult female elephant seals from Año Nuevo during the breeding season, in late January and early February. Females normally forage for about 3 months before returning to land to molt—at which time we recover the tags. This year seems to be a bit of an exception, as the females are coming back in droves, earlier than usual.

We have recovered 4 females already, and have more headed our way. To keep things interesting, 2 of the females decided to haul out on Año Nuevo Island (rather than the mainland) on the SAME DAY—a relatively unusual occurrence. That meant we had to hop in a boat and motor to the island to retrieve the tags. Another seal seems to be headed south for Spring Break—we’ll more than likely have a trip to San Simeon to recover a tag in a week or so.

After removing tags from all the returning seals, we’ll be choosing new seals to deploy 20 more tags. These seals will wear their tags and collect data until they return to pup next winter in January.

Here's one of the returning elephant seals earlier this year, with Jason Hassrick and Nicole Teutschel applying her tags.

A female tagged elephant seal (center) heads to sea in February, and is chased by males who want to mate with her before she leaves Año Nuevo.