Bit o' Rough and Tumble

Love is in the air…Well, for the elephant seals at least.

It’s reached that time when Alpha male Rusty and all the other surrounding males start to get their groove on and make moves on the ladies. The ladies don’t have much of a say in the matter and I’d hardly call it romantic, but they get the job done and this time next year the cows will be back again with yet more pups.

So in my other blog posts perhaps I painted a pretty picture of elephant seal life. The pups were very cute and the mothers doted on their every need. Males rumbled to fend off rivals and there were hummingbirds and rainbows and pretty things. Well since then things have become pretty gnarly.

Herzog



Rusty the alpha male

MC Hammer

Testosterone entered the camp and the males started to get a little too full of themselves, throwing their weight around (of which there is a considerable amount … up to 2000kg!) and showing off to the ladies.








Cows started bickering, fighting with their handbags, biting each other’s pups and gulls descended from the sky to come and feast upon the open wounds festering on the poor baby seals.
 A pleasant picture I am creating for you I am sure. Welcome to the Farallones.

So about a week ago we witnessed our first ‘proper’ fight between bull male elephant seals. We had just come to the end of our morning survey and Jason and I headed back to the house to collect the weather data. Ryan and Jane decided to stay a while longer at Sand Flat to look out for some more cows to identify. As they were searching all hell suddenly broke loose and Herzog and MC Hammer started to fight. Jane then radioed us to let us know and so we flew to Sand Flat as fast as we could caper to see what was going on.

As we reached the commotion we witnessed MC Hammer and Herzog sizing each other up as shown in the photo. Each one would then take his opportunity to bite into the other throwing his whole body into the manoeuvre.

It was pretty intense stuff. Then just as it looked as though Herzog was getting the upper hand and was potentially going to beat MC Hammer the pup-crushing,-weaner-mauling brute of a male (when we talk of ‘weaners’ we are referring to the pups that have weaned… Just in case there is some confusion!) the old dog Rusty (alpha male of sand flat for over four years!) shows up and the two fighting males start to tremble in their oversized boots.
Rusty hurtles after them… Well hurtles as much as an elephant seal can hurtle... This generally means one short burst of movement followed by a couple of minutes of recuperation, getting ones breath back, then another short burst of movement followed by yet more slumping and recovering. Herzog narrowly misses having his guts for garters and sneaks away relatively unscathed.  MC Hammer however is a little too slow on the uptake (he does have a blind left eye.. we’ll let him off) and gets a right royal bashing from Rusty. The two of them continue this way, with MC Hammer running for the water while Rusty is close on his tail giving him the occasional bite in the rear. They then get to the water and the fight continues until we can see them no more.

All this over a few females

Meanwhile, we celebrated our valentines day island style. Through the medium of food.

Chocolate truffles and carrot cake for breakfast lunch and dinner anyone?

Carrot cake lovingly made by Jane