Nicole Teutschel at Año Nuevo State Reserve, CA-- On Sunday, I was searching the beaches looking for ideal tagging candidates: adult females with flipper tags (that we put on when they were born), who are skinny, have big pups, and thick fur that we can glue the tags to. As the sun was setting, I was wading through the dozens of weaned pups in the Willows, some low-growing trees behind the largest harem at Año Nuevo State Reserve. Just as it was getting dark, I came across a familiar face. I tiptoed around the Willows, trying not to wake up the month-old 200- to 400-pound baby seals scattered across the path, and found a weanling with a bleach mark “O77”. It was Isabel’s pup!

Sunset in the Willows (above). All these "little" seals are weanlings -- they've been weaned from their mothers who have gone back to sea. Under the branches in the back of the Willows, I found Isabel's pup fast asleep (below). I was able to locate him because of his dye mark O77.

Locating these weanlings is important because the E-Seal Team is keeping track of all the pups from recovered females to learn more about the females themselves. Females who do a good job of finding food while they're at sea for nine months will be larger when they return to Año Nuevo ready to have their pups. Seals store their energy in their thick layer of blubber. The more successful the female was at foraging, the more fat reserves she will have to use while on land. The female must use that fat to give birth and rear her pup, and to produce enough milk to fatten up her pup enough to survive the post-weaning fast. The post-weaning fast lasts a couple of months, while pups molt off their black coats and somehow figure out that the only place they'll find their next meal is in the ocean.

Weanling “O77” was weaned two days before we found him and weighed him. At five days old he weighed 115 pounds, a little more than the average weight of a pup at that age. And he didn’t stop there….on Sunday this little guy weighed 320 pounds! He is a big weanling! Isabel must have done very well at sea. Because we found her weanling with others, we know that she's left the beach and is in the ocean, where she's building up fat reserves for the year to come.