Harbor Seals

This past wednesday we spent some time visiting the coast around the town of Cambria which we have been using as our home base for our stay in California. We have been to the beaches several time but we wanted to check out some tide pools and visit a cove where there are a whole bunch of harbor seals.

There is a several mile long beach in Cambria called Moonstone Beach and a the northern end of the beach there is a small cove which attracts harbor seals.We learned while visiting this cove that unlike the Elephant Seals, which migrate to and from Alsaka, harbor seals tend to spend their entire lives along the same ares of beach, which is why there are signs warning people to watch but not disturb the seals, if they no longer feel comfortable with a particular area of beach it can be devastating to the entire colony.

In an earlier blog I mentioned how large the elephant seals are, the harbor seals are much smaller. Harbor seals are about 5 to 6 feet long when fully grown and weigh up to 300 pounds. They can dive to depths of 1400 and stay under water for up to 40 minutes.The pups are born May through June and weigh about 30 pounds. I thought it was really cool that the pups make sounds like sheep.



While we were visiting the harbor seal cove we also saw several pelicans. The cove along Moonstone beach where the harbor seals is located at 35º 34' 38.79" N 121º 06' 58.83" W.