The real action occurs in December through February, with births,
nursing, and then mating all over the place. By March, most of the
mating is over; the males take to the water and the females finish
nursing their pups (one baby to each mom) and then head out as well.
The beach is mostly strewn with weaned babies (known as 'wieners'),
crying for their now-departed moms. Over the next several weeks, they
will start attempting to swim.
There are still a few adults around,
however-- mostly very lazy or younger males who are loitering in the
hopes of maybe finding a female still around who hasn't been mated
with a jillion times already. The adults don't eat during the entire
birth/fighting/mating period so by March they've lost almost two
thirds of the body mass they arrived with, but they're still quite
large and the guided tour generally ends up coming quite close to
both loitering males...
...and pockets of wieners that have moved further inland. The tours
are guided to both avoid exposure to danger from male aggression, and
to protect the wieners, which are very fragile animals. They're under
a lot of stress, what with only being a couple of months old and
their moms have already left them forever and they don't know how to
swim yet and males tend to step on them and more than half of them
are going to be eaten by sharks and orcas in the next two years...
Once you hit the beach, it's wieners as far as the eye can see, just
lying around wondering what they're supposed to do next, and
occasionally (if they can get up the strength for it) crying for
their mothers, who left days earlier. There are still a few nursing
females around in March (as seen on the right, mom on her side and
baby looking for lunch) but not many.
There's also a little bit of residual male aggression going around,
but not much. The real successful males have been and gone; these
ones didn't manage to get in and get some action during the prime
part of the season, so they're lording it over the few remaining
females, and making noise at each other. Not much actual fighting
going on anymore, though. On the left, the male on the left is
rearing up to successfully scare off the male on the right (the
darker-looking seal). On the right, a male comes sloshing out of the
water looking for a little afternoon lovin'. And you know what they
say about the size of an aquatic mammal's nose...
Despite the fact that she's almost certainly already been impregnated
by one of the dozens of more experienced males who got to her earlier
in the season, homeboy decides to climb on one of the few remaining
females for another go-around. The moment he starts approaching her,
she honks in protest, but he doesn't particularly care. The little
black lump behind them is her pup, the only reason she's still on the
beach at all. This time, it barely got out of the way in time as the
male lurched his way over to mama; one of the major causes of baby
seal death on the beach is being crushed by males as they move to
fight or mate. Mama is not having a real good time; don't let the
second picture fool you into thinking she's smiling. She protested
noisily the whole time. So did the baby.
The bond between mother and pup is very tenuous; if separated by as
little as twenty feet, they might lose track of each other and never
connect back up, resulting in the pup starving to death before
weaning age (another big cause of infant death). In the picture on
the left, looking up at the higher observation point, you can see a
couple of dead babies in the middle distance (where the seagulls
are). The other seals seem completely unaware, and apparently gulls
and coyotes make quick work of those who do die. In a typical season,
something like 6-12% of the babies born here don't live long enough
to make it out to sea. Once they're out there, however, the mortality
rate is even higher. (The picture on the right was taken from the
higher observation point, looking down at the lower beach where the
previous pictures were all taken.)
