From a young age my favourite animal was always the polar bear. I’m not sure why, but I always thought it was cool, and Canadian. But this powerful apex predator has fallen to number two on my list and replaced by the fat, ugly, and sometimes smelly, Elephant Seal. For the last few years I have photographed the elephant seal on the beaches of Pt. Reyes, California, and watched them for hours during their two months of birthing and mating on the same beaches, year after year. As I’ve learned about them, I’ve become enamoured with this animal that can only be considered a display of God’s sense of humour.
These animals are as interesting as they are unusual. The Elephant Seal mating season begins in January and the males make their way down from Alaska to a series of the same coastal California beaches they journey to every year. The females make an equally impressive journey from the warmer waters of Hawaii where they’ve spent the last nine months. They will return to these same beaches to give birth to the pups that have been gestating since last year’s fruitful mating season.
You can see the moms and their suckling pups all over certain beaches, with the blood stained sand bearing witness to the violence of birth in nature. The pups feed for two months before they are on their way into the ocean and do their best to dodge the enormous, larger males getting ready to impregnate the worn down females for yet another year.
The males are relatively solitary and bear no responsibility in the caring of their offspring. They are only interested in displays of dominance, which in turn will give them control over the largest harems of the population.
An alpha male can impregnate up to 500 females in a season and many of the larger ones have harems of up to 200 females. Smaller males scurry about the perimeter of the beaches in the hopes they can find just one lone, willing female to mate with. It is a hierarchical display of nature’s survival of the fittest. The strongest and most fit will breed the most in order to strengthen the species.
As March nears, the males enter the ocean where they will remain for the next 9 months straight, as they make their way back to Alaska. Similarly, the females leave and head towards Hawaii, carrying their newly fertilized egg which will grow into next years pup as they spend all the upcoming months in the water feeding and putting on lots of fat. The cycle continues and the Elephant Seal “circle of life” continues for another year.
Some put their faith in the magical powers of mindless mutations as the cause of these “miraculous” occurrences in nature. That sort of faith springs forth from the depths of self-delusion and the worship of nature as a god in and of itself. Modern day pantheism is indeed, alive and well. These curious creatures display the behaviours they were created to show, and to point towards the imaginative powers of a magnificent Creator. How do the salmon find their way back to their birthplace after years in the ocean? How do the monarchs migrate to the same areas of Canada and Mexico with no prior knowledge of their ancestors birthplace? And how do these giant seals travel thousands of miles only to return to the same beach year after year? The incomprehensibility of their innate behaviours points to something beyond ourselves, greater and more complex than anything we can imagine. They point to a Creator and Designer who certainly had fun with this one!
There is no prettier time of year when the joyful exuberance of summertime gives way to the aging blaze of colour in autumn; before the grey and cold winter signifies another year is done. I’ve gone for a number of long walks just to soak in the beauty of fall. Few things uplift the soul like colour on the trees and sunshine on the face.
Half Dome and Yosemite Valley
