The behemoth was smack dab in front of me. Unforgettable on reflection, yet in the moment I mistook it for a boulder.
It was years back. I was ambling north, along an alternately sandy and rocky shore, near Half Moon Bay, CA, lost in thought, with the sun settling to my left into the Pacific. It lay across my path, about 16 feet long, and a good 4 feet high at its middle (~ 13-14 feet in girth, I’d say).
I set to hop that “boulder,” but paused at the last as it stirred and then, with disdain, snorted through its proboscis. Awakened, I retreated and gave that magnificent bull the wide berth he so deserved.
In the 19th century, the northern elephant seal was hunted nearly to extinction, taken for its blubber for processing to oil for lamps and industrial lubricants. According to an account by the San Diego Natural History Museum:
So great was the slaughter that by the 1880s, the species was considered extinct. It was [therefore] a great surprise when a small population of the seals was found in 1892 on Guadalupe Island, an isolated, rocky piece of land some 200 miles off the coast of Baja California.
Left alone except for a few scientific expeditions over the next 30 years, the population slowly increased to a still dangerously low 264 individuals. Greatly helped by the Mexican government giving full protection to the seals in 1922, the elephant seal’s numbers had increased to between 8,000 and 10,000 in the late 1950s.[1]
In 1972, the U.S. Congress enacted the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The Act did not save the northern elephant seal –- the Mexican national government had already worked that miracle –- but the U.S. federal protection has clearly aided its recovery. Indeed, the most recent reliable population estimate that I can find reports 194,907 northern elephant seals in total, with – the a 95% confidence interval ranging from 170,185 to 233,677. It is a marked comeback.
Importantly, protection under the law for a marine mammal species does not terminate when its risk of extinction is merely relieved. In recognition of its own “inadequate knowledge of the ecology and population dynamics” of marine mammals, Congress determined to protect and conserve their “population stocks” to ensure they “not be permitted to diminish beyond the point at which they cease to be a significant functioning element in the ecosystem of which they are a part.”
In particular the Act, with certain limited exceptions, prohibits the “take” of any individual member “on the high seas,” or “in waters or on lands under the jurisdiction of the United States.” In turn, the Act defines “take” to mean “to harass,” among other things, with the term “harassment,” again in turn, meaning “any act of pursuit, torment, or annoyance which [among other things] has the potential to disturb a marine mammal . . . in the wild by causing disruption of behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering.”
Unabated climate change increasingly disturbs more than one part of the lifecyle of these land and sea-dwelling marine mammals. As an analyst with the Point Reyes National Seashore Association put it in 2022, “climate change is the driving cause behind beaches becoming less hospitable for elephant seals.”
In particular, along the western U.S. coastline northern elephant seals need to haul out on shore, during specific seasons, variously to give birth and to molt. But the rising seas resulting from humanity-driven global warming increasingly threaten their favored spots – beach strips backed by cliffs that function to keep human admirers and other nuisances at bay.
A recent video, shared on social media, depicts part of the problem, as a female and her pup struggle at water’s edge. The 20-second scene was captured by Friends of the Elephant Seal. In its caption, the group observes that “[s]eals face rising air and water temperatures, shifts in the location of their prey, and loss of beach habitat from sea level rise. Because of that habitat loss, there will be higher chances of elephant seals interacting with humans as they seek out new breeding/resting areas.”
Regrettably, the Marine Mammal Protection Act is powerless to keep the sea at bay. This is so because major sources of unabated fossil fuel emissions are not properly characterized as engaged in acts of “pursuit, torment or annoyance.” Accordingly, I think, they will not be restricted under the Act, even though the emissions clearly retain “the potential to disrupt . . . behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering.”
In the caption of its short video, Friends of the Elephant Seal advises viewers that they can help by reducing their carbon footprint, by walking or cycling when possible, by shopping for locally grown produce, and “by reducing single use plastics and choosing to reuse.”
All sensible advice, to be sure. I would add, however, a modest additional recommendation, that is, that wider action is also needed. After all, the rising seas that threaten northern elephant seals rookeries (and more) are a function, in part, of the planet’s continuing energy imbalance, and that imbalance, in turn, is driven by the exploitation and burning of fossil fuels.
Accordingly, we need to act nationally and globally – including by ensuring the nation remains-in and strengthens the world’s climate treaty.
In the end, in order to best protect the northern elephant seal, and more, we need to save the planet.
[1] See also, https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/upload/resourcenewsletter_elephantseals.pdf