Melinda Fowler at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab - We started putting satellite tags on a new set of female elephant seals who will head to the ocean later this month for their long migration -- seven to nine months in the place they call home most of their lives -- the cold North Pacific Ocean.

Nicole Teutschel at Long Marine Lab, CA -- One of the best things about being a marine biologist is getting to ask questions about the oceans, and then figuring out how to get the answers. Many of the tags we deploy give us little clues, or puzzle pieces that we then get to put together in an attempt to discover the bigger picture. Professor Ken Yoda of the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Nagoya University in Japan was scratching his head trying to figure out a way to learn more about one of the missing pieces in the elephant seal puzzle: foraging.

Nicole Teutschel at Año Nuevo State Reserve, CA -- Last weekend we hiked down to the North Point harems on a mission to weigh Coya's and Flora’s weaners when we ran into Melinda and Cory, two E-Seal Team members doing resights -- looking for seals with flipper tags. They were on their way out, but had some great E-Seal gossip: Melinda had spotted a huge super-weaner in the dunes!

Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA -- Their proper name is weanlings. But we call them weaners. They've finished nursing. Most have gained 150 to 300 pounds. Almost all of their moms have headed back into the ocean. And now, among the dunes, willows and nooks and crannies of the beaches, a couple of thousand weaners clump together, in twos to twenties, going through their month-long fast.

Nicole Teutschel at Año Nuevo State Reserve, CA -- From the first day of life, elephant seals are living in the fast lane. Penelope's pup, who was born on January 24^th, was weaned around the 23^rd of February. Most pups are weaned about 27 days they're born.

Jane Stevens at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab -- Valentine's Day isn't just for humans. During this Valentine's Day week, the love hormones of elephant seals at Año Nuevo State Reserve are raging.

The females migrated from the far reaches of the North Pacific Ocean late last year, and began hitting the beaches in late December. Most of them arrived in January. A few days after they arrived, they gave birth to their pups.

Nicole Teutschel, Long Marine Lab, CA--When the TOPP E-seal team was running though the waves, trying to avoid getting soaked, they almost ran right into Penelope! Penelope’s tag’s antenna was sticking up out of the surf as she came on shore. As the water level fell back, there she was!

Jane Stevens at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA - When will she hit the beach?

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.