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  • Day 8

    Elephant point seal sanctuary

    February 11, 2022 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    Not far at the coast. Our first scheduled stop was at the elephant points seal sanctuary. As is usual with these sorts of places, I didn't really expect to see anything and thought we would just get some good views of the coast.

    We pulled into the car park and started to walk along and were really excited to see a handful of seals just in small little coves relaxing in the sun. We spent ages looking at them and then carried on wandering. It turns out that the seals that we saw there were just an amuse-bouche for the main course which was a huge long stretch of beach. Absolutely packed with seals of various shapes and sizes; male, female juveniles and babies.

    They were absolutely mesmerising and we spent a long time. Just standing and watching them laying around barking. Annoying each other and fighting. There was some huge, great big male seals and the time that we're visiting is right at the end of the breeding season.

    Colony of seals apparently only started coming to this beach and stretch of coastline in 1990, but they're now regular visitors and spend 3 months at this time of the year breeding and the females giving birth and then 3 months around may time for the molting season and the rest of the time they spend a solitary existence in the water.

    Eventually we are realised that we just had to move on And so we reluctantly got back in the car and restart start journey.
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