baby Southern Elephant Seal (Mirounga leonina)

Caroline Bay, Timaru, 26 September 2015

A female Elephant Seal came ashore at Caroline Bay a week or so ago, and gave birth on Thursday (today is Saturday, so the pup is only three days old). Elephant Seal births on the mainland are very very rare, so this was a must-see event for me. The only other Elephant Seal I have seen was a young male at Kaikoura in June this year.

Unfortunately I cannot rate the chances of survival to weaning very high for this pup. The beach is literally right next to town and the pup has become a local celebrity of sorts. I was there for about four hours today and there were literally hundreds of people coming and going, a fair number of whom brought their dogs with them. There were also several dogs running unleashed on the beach.

I hope to be proven wrong, and see the pup survive to leave the beach.

that is indeed the umbilical cord remnant.

this was one of my favourite photos of the day. I didn't get any properly showing the follow-up, but what the baby was doing was yawning, putting his flipper up, and then sticking it in his mouth and sitting there sucking on it for a few seconds. Really cute.

Perhaps related to this is that I didn't see the pup suckling at all in the four hours I was there, so hopefully that is normal and not a bad sign!