Every winter, thousands of visitors flock to the Piedras Blancas elephant seal rookery to watch the antics of pupping and mating season, and hopefully learn about where the seals go once they leave the viewing area.
Adult seals spend 70 to 80 percent of their lives at sea, migrate thousands of miles to depths as great as 1 mile, and forage on fish such as shark, crab, ratfish and squid, all information gathered by researchers at the Dan Costa Lab at UC Santa Cruz and the Tagging of Pacific Predators program (TOPP).
For the past few weeks, an elephant seal with an antennae-like tag attached to its head and the number B821 on his back was seen at San Simeon Cove. B821, or “Mike,” is a part of the Ph.D. research project of Sarah Kienle that studies the diving behavior and foraging ecology of male elephant seals.
The antenna on Mike’s head was part of a sea mammal research unit (SMRU) tag used to transmit the seal’s location at sea and foraging sites via satellite. The 9-year-old male elephant seal was tagged at Año Nuevo in August, and the tag transmitted his migration to Alaska before it stopped transmitting. In order to obtain the complete data set, the research team needed to retrieve the tag.