Nicole Marie Teutschel, at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab--Last spring TOPP researchers from the Costa Lab at UC Santa Cruz deployed satellite tags on 20 adult female elephant seals. The tag from one seal who arrived at Año Nuevo State Reserve early in November was recovered, while the remaining 19 seals are making their way back to shore.
We're featuring 10 of these seals on the Elephant Seal Homecoming Days page. At this blogging, these seals are 9 to 560 miles away, returning from their 9-month journey throughout the North Pacific. Coya, Penelope, Annie, Clara, Mukurma, Isabel, Flora, and Guadalupe all seem to be on track: they've turned around and are heading back to Año Nuevo. But Myoceen and Cheddar seem to have plans of their own!
Cheddar is very close to Año Nuevo, bouncing between 9 and 20 miles from the colony. Cheddar is a 10-year-old seal, born at Año Nuevo State Reserve. She is remarkably close to Año but hasn't come up on the beach! This is odd behavior because e-seals usually stay out at sea until they “commute” back to their colonies to breed and pup. Cheddar spent weeks taking a slow swim down the California coast and then passed Año Nuevo (see the first track). For the last week, Cheddar has been swimming around Santa Cruz near the Monterey Bay! We don't know why, but it seems strange that she is within a mile of Long Marine Lab, home of the Costa Lab's elephant seal tagging program. Is she trying to bring her tag back on her own?

Myoceen, a 15-year-old seal also born at Año Nuevo, was on her way back to Año when she, too, continued south! While researchers were worrying that she would decide to have her pup in on one of California's remote Channel Islands, Myoceen made a sudden turn and landed on the beach at Piedras Blancas (see the second track), another northern elephant seal colony. Piedras Blancas, just south of Big Sur near San Simeon, is similar to Año Nuevo in that it is home to thousands of northern elephant seals.

Piedras Blancas is also home to the Friends of the Elephant Seal, a nonprofit organization that works on northern elephant seal outreach at the colony. The docents have been helping TOPP look for Myoceen, but so far have had no luck. That's likely due to the huge storm systems that rocked our coasts last week. Piedras Blancas is near California's famous Highway 1, so close that they've had to put up fences to keep the seals from going into the roadway. During the storm, the seals were pushed off the beaches by the huge waves and against the fences...and sometimes pushing through them and undulating across the highway!

Tomorrow, TOPP researcher Jason Hassrick and I will venture down the California Coast to check on Myoceen, and the other seals who may have gone astray after the storm. We will find out where Myoceen is within the colony, make sure she’s healthy, and find out if she’s had her pup yet. We'll post photos and an update tomorrow. Be sure to check the Elephant Seals Homecoming Page for updates on the rest of the seals, and more information about their histories and names.