- Hours: Tours are given daily from December through March
- Cost: There is a modest fee for the tour and also a parking fee
- Location: California Highway 1, 20 miles north of Santa Cruz and 27 miles south of Half Moon Bay
- How Long: The tour lasts about 2.5 hours
- Best Time to Visit: January and February are the best months to see the action, but also the time when weather tends to be the worst. Go too early and you'll see only the males coming ashore. go too late and you'll find the young sea lions but no adults.
- See It Now: Photo Tour
In the nineteenth century, elephant seals were hunted to the verge of extinction and by 1892, less than 100 individuals remained. In 1922, Mexico led the way to rescue them by passing protective legislation and the United States followed. The species began to recover, and in the 1950s the first pups were born at Ano Nuevo Island. By the 1970s, the island became so crowded that the colony expanded onto the nearby shore. Today, there are more than 150,000 elephant seals, and many of them come to Año Nuevo every year, making it the site of the largest breeding colony of the northern elephant seal.
Because the colony is easily accessible via a short hike over the sand dunes, visitors are treated to an extraordinary opportunity to see the breeding colony up close. Tours are guided by volunteer naturalists, who explain the goings-on and keep the elephants seals and humans safe from each other.
A typical tour starts with a 25-minute walk from the park headquarters to a staging area where the naturalists meet their groups. The group makes their way across the sand dunes to the breeding area. The path varies daily depending on animal activities, but lucky visitors may witness the birth of a pup or a battle between two males. The 2.5-ton males make bellowing call that sounds like a "motorcycle in a drain pipe" as docents like to say, and most of the fights are mere skirmishes, but exciting nevertheless.
Practicalities
- The only way to see the seals during breeding season is on a guided tour. Spaces on the tour are by reservation only Learn how to make California state park reservations.
- No food or beverages (except for bottled water) are allowed on the tour, and no refreshments are available at the park, so eat before you go or take a picnic with you.
- Pets are not allowed in the park and umbrellas are not allowed on the walk.
- The walk is about 3 miles long, moderately strenuous, and the path to the viewing area is not suitable for those with mobility impairments. However, the park can accommodate people with special needs on a wheelchair-accessible boardwalk with advance special reservations.
More San Mateo County Beaches
In order from north to south:
- Pacifica State Beach
- James V. Fitzgerald Marine Reserve
- Maveericks
- Half Moon Bay Beaches
- Cowell Ranch State Beach
- San Gregorio State Beach
- Pomponio State Beach
- Pebble Beach
- Bean Hollow State Beach
Elephant Seal Life Cycle
Elephant seals spend most of their life at sea, but starting in late December, individuals begin to come on shore one by one.Males arrive first. Fourteen to sixteen feet long and weighing up to 2 1/2 tons, they engage in small skirmishes and violent battles to establish dominance and for the right to settle in the center of the harem and mate with all its females.
Females give birth to a single 75-pound pup 3 to 6 days after they come on shore, then they gather in large harems. They nurse their young for 28 days, then abandon the pups (who now weigh up to 350 pounds) to return to the sea. By March, most of the adults are gone and the pups, called "weaners" must learn how to swim, find food and survive on their own.
Most animals shed hair year-around, but elephant seals do it abruptly. They return to the shore during the spring and summer to molt. The rest of the year they are at sea, where they spend up to 90% of their time under water, diving for 20 minutes at a time to a depth of 2,000 feet searching for food.
