Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA - And four more named seals are back! Since it was at least five days since Myoceen gave birth to her pup, we drove down to Piedras Blancas last Thursday to recover her satellite tag. We found Myoceen in a large harem just north of San Simeon and home to another elephant seal colony that's now larger than the one at Año Nuevo. Myoceen is 15 years old -- that's getting up there for female elephant seals. After over a week of fasting on shore, Myoceen still weighed more than 1,150 pounds! When we tracked her down on January 10, a couple of days after she arrived on the beach, we estimated that she weighed well over 1,300 pounds.

Myoceen protecting her pup from a near by aggressive female (above). She demonstrated a strong bond with her pup before and after the procedure (below).

From Myoceen we recovered a satellite tag, a time-depth recorder (TDR) tag, and a radio tag. We also took measurements and blood samples to learn more about her physiology. As we wrapped up the procedure, we took measurements and weighed her pup. Her five-day-old pup, a female, already weighs more than 90 pounds!

Myoceen, after her tags had been removed. Here she is responding to her pup's vocalizations.

One day later, the TOPP E-Seal team was back at Año Nuevo State Reserve recovering the three tags-- a GPS satellite tag, a TDR, and a radio tag -- from Isabel, an 11-year-old who arrived at Año on January 8^th. Soon after she had her pup, a boy! Five days after she gave birth, we recovered her tags.,

TOPP researchers isolate Isabel and her pup from the harem, just after the initial injection. It's important to position ourselves so that we can monitor her breathing, and keep her safe from nearby action in the harem (above). In photo: Principal Investigator Dr. Daniel Crocker, and PhD students Cory Champagne and Melinda Fowler.

She, too, had gained a lot of weight since we placed tags on her. In May, she weighed about 650 pounds, and after nine months of foraging at sea and a 10-day fast, she weighed more than 1070 pounds. That’s a gain of 420 pounds! Her five-day-old son weighed 90 pounds!

There are more females arriving at Año every day: Penelope, Flora, Mukurma, and Guadalupe have reached the beach. But Cheddar is still hanging out offshore; she's swimming back and forth around Santa Cruz, and we can't figure out why.

Oh -- remember Lucky, the male elephant seal that crossed Highway 1? He's in a pasture, basically the exact same place I saw him last time I was there.