Elephant Seal ... Your last time?

I have only seen one elephant seal in my entire zoo time ('Sharky' in Berlin Zoo 1999, it died the year after, the last in Europe to my knowledge) and have been somewhat obsessed with them for years, as with most marine mammals, but elephant seals in particular. I have found myself staring at old elephant seal pools (such as in Antwerp, Antibes and Stuttgart) even if they by then only had things like Common Seals, trying to picture the gigantic things still swimming around in them.

That was the last (and only) time seeing an elephant seal? But what about you? I would like to trace the route elephant seals followed from being a bit common (in the larger zoos at least) after WWII and up until there was none left. Can you possibly recall you last time seeing them and:

1) What collection and when?
2) How many were they?
3) Large or young and small?
4) Southern or Northern?
5) Were they with anything, such as Common Seal, Californian Sealion or any type of Penguin?

Rehabs do pop up occasionally in the States. A blind one was housed at the Oregon Zoo but it died some years ago and San Francisco Zoo housed some pups whilst a rehab centre nearby underwent construction last year. Guess SeaWorld San Diego always has rehabs to care for, but never in public? Only been there once and saw none.

Mundo Marino in Buenos Aires aparently use elephant seals for shows just like all other parks use sealions. Possibly a few others in Argentina and Chile have them. I have heard about a marine park in South Africa which aparently has some but not managed to dig up the name. In Japan at least one, Futami Sea Paradise, has them, and supposedly breeds! Can anyone shed further light on them or been to these places? I have put in effort over the years to find out more, but for me its language. Besides, the internet is only good up to a limit.

 

I saw a few juveniles and an adult male northern elephant seals in the wild in California in 2004. One woman thought they were giant slugs!

 

I saw hundreds of them in the wild. They flock to Ano Nuevo (south of San Francisco) and literally cover the beach. I even got to see some males mock-fighting. This was back in 1993, I think.

 

I saw a southern elephant seal at Flamingoland in 1970. It was later sent to Dudley Zoo.

 

A marine park that used to be on the Gold coast use to have a pair of Southern elephant seals in the early 80s, the park did close down at a later point, I cant remeber if they were sent to another park or not

 

Saw one northern elephant seal in Antwerp in 1990's, in a tiny pool with harbour seal. I doubt if it could even swim a circle in this tiny pool.

I also saw lots of wild southern elephant seals in Patagonia. Not exciting, everybody says they look like giant slugs.

BTW - I wonder if wild elephant seals were ever filmed hunting underwater? Perhaps they are more lively there.

P.S. Stuttgart zoo bred them (once?) in 1960's(?).

 

The U.K collections that have held them in the past that i know of are London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Dudley, Cleethorpes and flamingoland.

 

The San Francisco zoo every year has at least 2 orphan elephant seal pups. They are there until they are ready to be released into the wild. The cool thing is that they are visible to the public, but only from February to June.

A link on the website about the seal program (it's PDF):

http://www.sfzoo.org/openrosters/DocDownload.asp?orgkey=1903&id=29842

 

I've ssen northen elephant sela sin the wild in 2005, and the last one I've ssen ina zoow as " Sharky " in Berlin Zoo in 2000. I've ssen sveeral times " Charly", the adult male which has lived a long time in Stuttgart. I can remember " King", the big male at Frankfurt Zoo, but I was still a child, as he died in 1979.

Stuttgart has bred one time an elephant seal, the young was born in 1965, but is had to be handraised. It died the same yera. Berlin handraised one in 1977, but it died also a few month later. Antwerp had a mother raised young,"Eric", he was send to Berlin Zoo.

So many elephant seals died in the zoos, so its better to let them in the wild.It's impossible to keep them in captivity.

 

taronga zoo had some southern elephant seals in their collection in the late 80's and early 90's.

 

Is it true there's a tiny colony of Ele Seals that still breed at a place called 'the Nuggets' on the coast between Dunedin & Invercargill on the South Island of NZ?. I was told there are two or three calves born there most years. Went to look for them once but never saw any sign....

 

Thanks, Chlidonias!

All elephant seal pools I know were very small, and they could barely move in them. So they looked ugly, like giant slugs. Perhaps it is good that zoos stopped keeping them.

BTW, how are walruses faring in zoos? Is it true, that almost all have tusks removed because of concrete pool floors?

 

2008 standards weren't there when elephant seals were around in zoos, a decade or so ago at least. And elephants, another giants, did not get much space either at the time, it is now in the past few years that we are seeing paddocks suiting them. So if elephant seals would be brought again into zoos, they too would get pools suiting them. So it is really unfair to judge past zoo traditions because they didn't have or do what we do in the present. They had to make the mistakes so that we could be successful.

Walruses, where they are they seem to be doing OK, even if breeding is not always the case. Harderwijk is one. But when you mention tusks, is the story true that the Hagenbecks, when they had walruses, always refused to tell other zoos how they prevented their animals from loosing their tusks? It had something to do with the exhibit material so when they lifted themselves out of the pool using the tusks, like walruses do, the tusks did not go down with time. Others have mastered it since, however, the SeaWorlds usually have tuskers.

 

The obvious way to go would be to incoroprate a beach/landing area in the pool so the Walrus can haul out without having to use their tusks at all on hard surfaces.

 

I've never seen them, either in the wild or in captivity.

 

My last elephant seal in a zoo was the already mentioned 'Sharky'.

The Enoshima Aquarium in Japan kept an Southern Elephant Seal called Minazo till 2005, which became something like an Internet/popular media icon.
Popular Enoshima aquarium seal dies after 10 1/2-year run | The Japan Times Online
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1914006

The Sausalito Marine Mammal Center also keeps now and then Northern elephant seals.

There are several problems in terms of apt walrus husbandry which inhibit their further establishment in more zoos:
-the highly expensive husbandry and the question of obtaining "new" animals
-the mentioned tusk problem (which is also influenced by the animals' contact with the floor of the tanks) BTW: has anyone seen the ones kept at Moscow Zoo?
-the strange habit of some specimens to suck out the sealing compounds found in their enclosure (similiar to the behaviour of one of the former beluga whales at Duisburg Zoo).

 

Thanks for all the info about Elephant seals in NZ. I did see one- I think it was a subadult male, on a beach near Dunedin- unfortunately I was the wrong side of the estuary to get close to it. I'd heard of one that associated with cows too.

 

We have had in the near past the odd elephant seal come ashore in Victoria ending up in some farmers paddocks chasing some poor old dairy cows around