Larry and I spent a day, just the two of us, in Santa
Cruz. After lunch on the wharf we walked
out to the very end. We saw something
I’d never seen before and I probably will never see again. There was a group of seals resting just a
small distance from the pier, maybe thirty yards, so close we could see their
whiskers! There were hundreds of seals,
maybe even a thousand! When I commented
to a local fisherman I’d never seen this many seals before he told me it was
only the second time in his life he’d seen this and this was the first time
he’d seen it at Santa Cruz.
This picture is not of the seals we saw. We could actually not see much blue between
the ones we saw as they were packed so tightly together. The fisherman said they were migrating. He said they’d stop here to rest
before continuing their journey. They
were huddled closely together, actually overlapping. He said they were a “traveling
rookery” or group that stays together.
There were lots of babies included in the group. The bigger seals were around the outer edge
and mixed in the middle of the circle, while the inner circle had a large
number of babies. The babies were snuggled
up against and on top of bigger seals.
Some were nursing while others slept.
It was easy to tell which seals were napping and which were on lookout
by the way some of the seals didn’t move and some were keeping vigilant watch
for predators.
Occasionally one of the larger seals on the outer edge
would give out a distinct bark and quietly disappear into the water only to
reappear close the center of the group for a turn to rest. It was as if the bark signaled the next seal
to keep alert and take over guard duty.
The fisherman said we were watching something rarely
seen in this area. He called it a “seal
island.” The name surely fit. It was a floating mass of seals. I noticed the seals under the pier were
barking in their usually loud fashion but there was a softer, almost soothing,
constant hum of chatter from the “island.”
I think it was mostly females and babies in the island
but there were a few huge seals that surely must have been males.
How amazing! Would have loved to have seen it!
ReplyDelete