Nicole Teutschel at Año Nuevo State Reserve, CA -- Isabel, one of TOPP’s featured elephant seals during the Elephant Seal Homecoming Days, has landed on the beaches of Año Nuevo! She's the second seal to make it to shore....Myoceen has already landed at Piedras Blancas, near San Simeon.

Isabel is an adult female northern elephant seal tagged last spring. After nine months of foraging thoughout the North Pacific, she is back to have her pup, and then breed before heading back out to sea.

We'll recover her satellite tag, time-depth recorder and radio tag when her pup is 5 days old. That means we’ll be checking on her every day until we see that she’s had her pup. It's important to wait to recover the tag when her pup is 5 days old because we don’t want to disrupt the mother-pup bond that is formed during the first few days of life. Today, Isabel is at the harem known as Año Point Gully, which is one of Año Nuevo’s largest harems! She’s right near the edge, and looking very sleepy...

In the search for Isabel we found the first weaner, marked by PhD student Cory Champagne. Weaners are what we call the pups after they’ve been weaned from their mother. This little guy, who we call “#1”, is about three hundred pounds! He still has his fuzzy black coat and seems pretty confused at his new situation: the post-weaning fast. This weaner gained 10 pounds a day for a reason: he now has to use those new fat stores to surrive a month-long fast. During the fast "#1" will develop, loose its thick fur, and get ready to forage on his own.

We’ll follow this not-so-little guy in future blogs. We've marked him with hair dye so that we can follow him throughout his fast.