Seals Return to California Islands in Record Numbers
On the Farallon Islands, off the coast of San Francisco, the waters have been taken over by fur seal pups. They are everywhere, bobbing on the surface of the water. This sight was unexpected as seal numbers have been greatly reduced in these waters for over a century, reported SFGATE.
When the seal pups were first sighted in October 2024, Gerry McChesney, a manager at the Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge decided to go take a look for himself.
“I was amazed to see them all piled in there, getting tossed around like they were in a washing machine,” he told SFGATE in an email, adding that he counted 440 in all. “They looked pretty content and like they were having a good ol’ time.”
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He made a video of the seals that was shared by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service on Instagram and Facebook, that went viral with comments like “seal pup daycare” and “nature’s mosh pit.”
Seals and the Farallon Islands
These islands host one of the two fur seal rookeries in California. The seals McChesney saw are Northern Fur seals that spend most of the year in the ocean, according to the NOAA Fisheries website. These seals were hunted for their fur pelts and their numbers dwindled. In 1911, the Fur Seal Treaty prohibited hunting seals at sea but it took until 1984 to end the commercial harvest of fur seals on land.
The only large breeding colonies that still existed were on the Pribilof Islands in Alaska and the Commander Islands off eastern Siberia, reported SFGATE. But in 1996, a female seal made her way from the Channel Islands to Farallon Islands; where 141 acres of the islands were designated as a protected wilderness in 1974. This was the first birth on the islands for 150 years. Now the population is rebounding.
The Seal Surge
Pupping season runs from June to August and then the pups and moms remain in the breeding area for a few months until they are weaned in November. Then the newly independent seal pups go to sea. But the number of pups this year is an indicator that this species has made a comeback.
Biologists from the Point Blue Conservation Science have documented 2,133 fur seals of which 1,276 are pups. McChesney told SFGATE that this is “the highest pup count yet.” But there could be many more that were not spotted.
“It was so much fun to watch,” McChesney said. “And knowing that the sight represents such an amazing comeback for their population made the sight mean so much more.
