A historic breeding colony of fur seals has produced record numbers of pups which can be seen splashing and tumbling about in the waters off the Farallon Islands.
The latest population count provides a sight unseen for 150 years when these islands off San Francisco were once home to 150,000 elephant and fur seals, and welcome evidence of the long-term benefits of marine mammal conservation.
The Farallon Islands witnessed overhunting of the seal rookery during a market boom for their blubber and pelts in the late 19th-early 20th century. A conservation treaty signed by the US, Canada, and Russia banned their hunting in 1915, and a second piece of legislation designating the Farallon Islands as a wilderness was passed in 1972.
Over time, these measures ensured that neighboring seals could re-establish their lost colony, which has now grown into the thousands.
2,133 fur seals were recently counted during a population survey by Point Blue Conservation Science, a number that included 1,276 pups, the highest ever.
“I was amazed to see them all piled in there, getting tossed around like they were in a washing machine,” Gerry McChesney, manager of the Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge, told SFGATE in an email. “They looked pretty content and like they were having a good ol’ time.”
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The pups can be seen bobbing up and down in the rough waters of coves, inlets, and rocky shallows where the area’s apex predator, the great white shark, can’t reach them. They remain in a big float waiting for their mothers to return from the sea where they can spend several days in a row feeding to bolster their milk supplies.
Returning, the mothers will find their pups using a special call unique to them and identifiable over the din of waves and barking of other pups.
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McChesney added that the terrain and various sheltered coves make it difficult to perform a complete estimate of the number of seal pups, “this was a minimal count and there were certainly many more,” he noted.
“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.”
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