Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA - We saw the first pup born at Año Nuevo State Reserve yesterday. He's 7 weeks old -- a weaner! He was born early in December, and was weaned a couple weeks ago when his mother abruptly left his side and headed back into the ocean to find some food. She hadn't eaten since she came one shore -- five whole weeks.

This little guy weighted 90 pounds when he was born. He nursed off his mom for about 28 days. Each day, he gained about 10 pounds, and ended up one big pup. He weighs nearly 300 pounds!

This is the first pup with mom at only a few days old. Notice how baggy his coat is to prepare for his approaching rapid weight gain!

Here he is at nearly a week old. You can already see the weight he's gained in such a short amount of time.

E-seal pups put up with a lot! After his mother left him, he had to get out of the harem where he was born. He was pushed back into the willows, some low growing trees where the big males have a hard time fighting because they can barely fit under the branches. This way he isn't bitten by females, picked on by males, or hit by the waves that crash onto the shore.

Soon after weaning, we put flipper tag “GU551” on him. "G" means green, signifying that he was born at Año Nuevo, and his identification number is U551. This will be his unique number for the rest of his life. I was able to identify him yesterday because of his new tag.

Here he is, weaned from mom and napping on the dunes near the willows. If you look closely at his belly and chin, he still has some dark fur that he's molting off.

Wow....has he changed since I last saw him (see previous blog posting)! He’s lost his brown pup fur; he now has his first silvery grey coat shining through. He seems similar to other juveniles, like the yearlings around him, except for a few major differences. He’s really fat, only has little teeth (if any at all), has bits of brown fur still molting off, and he’s pretty naïve! Instead of running away, barking, or growling at me…he wanted to figure out what I was!

In the next couple of weeks, our first pup will be going through the post-weaning fast. That means that he’ll be using up his new layer of fat as he figures out what it means to be an elephant seal. During this time, he'll nap a lot to conserve energy. But when he’s lost his fat reserves, he'll be forced to head into the ocean to find food for the first time, all alone, with no guidance from mom or anyone else (except his genes)! We’ll try to follow him as he figures out what it means to take the first steps to growing up.