Elephant Seals Galore at South Georgia
Seldom has the raw power of nature asserted itself on all my senses as did two mornings on elephant seal beaches in South Georgia in November 2019. The tales I’d heard were intriguing, but witnessing the scene firsthand was logarithmically more impressive!
A beach littered with elephant seal bulls with their harems and pups (plus penguins!)
Note the comparative sizes of the male, female, and pup.
A beachmaster scarred from many conflicts, resting in the morning light
Unlike other large-animal encounters I’ve had in the wild, we were allowed to wander on our own, cautioned simply to be careful. We had hours of opportunity to observe these magnificent creatures. The males are truly impressive, reaching up to 20 feet in length and weighing up to 8,800 pounds (yes: more than four tons!). Their inflatable noses, which are considered a secondary sexual characteristic, are sort of comical until they get serious about intrusions into their territories by other males. I witnessed firsthand how very quickly these guys can move when they erupt into a rampage. The rippling blubber evoked the bulky might of sumo wrestlers.
After a winter at sea, males arrive on the beaches first, coming ashore in August and September (early spring) to lay claim to their territories. Pregnant females arrive a few weeks later and whelp their pups within a few days. There may be 30-100 females in a “harem” depending on the social rank of the male. They are smaller, but still an impressive 8-10 feet long and 900-1900 pounds.
At rest, this juvenile male looks rather like a blubbery boulder...except for those eyes!
Steam rises as the beachmaster bellows. The pup had better scoot out of the way!
Female elephant seals nurse only for about 23 days, but pups weighing only about 88 pounds at birth gain up to 400 pounds by the time they are weaned. That’s a weight gain of about 20 pounds a day! Weaned pups look a lot like “weiners” – fat little hotdogs who use their stored energy until they figure out (on their own) after six weeks or so that sustenance awaits them out at sea.
After weaning, it’s time for sex on the beach–and it is very noisy! The females go into estrus about four days before weaning last year’s pup. They will then emit various behavioral and chemical cues to the males that they are receptive to their advances. Copulation is brief and repeated (and not always with the same male). [Thanks to NatGeo naturalist Elise Lockton for many of these details.]
Hind flippers of an elephant seal
Elephant seal pups in morning light
The largest males are known as “beachmasters.” Sexually mature at about five, they reach the height of their power around age 9-12 in a lifespan for Southern elephant seals that may last 20-21 years. They work hard, ruling their patch of beach while younger males consistently edge in to have their way with the girls. A big male may not eat for the whole season onshore as he guards against intruders and also “services” his harem.
Juveniles play-joust while the beachmaster sleeps and a gentoo penguin slips past
Imagine the swirl of activity on an elephant seal beach, as the surf plays a steady background cadence. There are bawling pups, scrappy females, bellowing males. Territorial disputes create a shifting dynamic as males try to fend off interlopers approaching from the sea, from the side, from the high ground – everywhere. Pups try to scoot away but can sometimes be crushed beneath charging or arguing adults. Females squawk and argue. Males often hold females in a “hug” with their flippers. Occasionally, a female is still nursing her pup. It’s tender. It’s tough. Witnessing it is simultaneously magical, scary, wondrous.
Beach drama among several males, with steamy, full-throated roaring
A juvenile male growing into his “trunk”
Eventually, the beach clears, and the elephant seals return to their undersea world to migrate and forage. Like many seal populations, they were on the brink of extinction when the years of hunting them for their oil ended in the late 1800s, Happily their numbers have rebounded well.
Two veterans show how it’s really done - a roaring, physical conflict!
It’s interesting to know that a Southern elephant seal can dive over 4,921 feet deep and remain submerged for two hours. [Source: nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/group/elephant-seals/ accessed February 13, 2020] They only come back to land when it’s time, again, for the breeding season that we were so lucky to observe.
[Our hosts were the cream of the crop at National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions. See more at nationalgeographic.com/expeditions/]
A very young pup ponders the situation
