Nicole Teutschel at Año Nuevo State Reserve, CA -- Last weekend we hiked down to the North Point harems on a mission to weigh Coya's and Flora’s weaners when we ran into Melinda and Cory, two E-Seal Team members doing resights -- looking for seals with flipper tags. They were on their way out, but had some great E-Seal gossip: Melinda had spotted a huge super-weaner in the dunes!

Super-weaners are the weaned pups that are absolutely HUGE! Most of them nursed from two or more mothers. Instead of stopping at 250 or 300 pounds, they kept nursing…and growing.
The super-weaner in the dunes at NP. To give you an idea of how big he is...I estimate that the smaller seal, is over 300 pounds. Easy.

Super-weaners grow to 350, 400, 450 or even 500 pounds! Some super-weaners have even out-grown their skinny mothers!

A super-weaner found at Tarsands Central, another harem at Año Nuevo State Reserve. This weanling is more than twice the size of the other weaners in its group.

Melinda was right. We hiked up the dunes, down a grassy slope, and there he was! Melinda and Cory had put flipper tags on him so that we could follow this not-so-little seal throughout his month-long fast. They didn’t have the weighing gear on them so they didn’t have an exact weight…only BIG guesses. After our crew found him, we decided we were up for the weighing challenge!

It was pretty tough to weigh him, not because it was more dangerous than the average weaner, but because he’s just so big! Despite his size, he’s still only a month old and is pretty confused about his new foodless situation. He won't eat until he's molted, realized that the ocean, not the land, is his real home, and heads into it to find his first solid. At this age, weaners hang out on the beach and fast, flip sand in the air, make some pretty funny noises, and sleep most of the day while their pup fur is molting off.

PhD student Stella Villegas next to the super-weaner.

When we found, him he was snoozing. So we snuck up to try and catch him by surprise. We quietly opened and prepared to put the bag over his head. Then he sneezed. We burst out laughing, because we all felt the sand shake when his big body moved!

Well, that woke him up and he saw us! Lucky for our crew, many super-weaners are so big that they can’t move very fast. We placed him in the weaner weighing bag, and cranked him up to be weighed. And just as we suspected, he is a BIG SEAL. He weighed 450 pounds!

The super-weaner after we had weighed him. Now he's moved to the bottom of the dune near the beach. The weaner on the opposite side is a normal-size weaner. Photo by Stella Villegas.

The question is, will he survive? Some scientists think that it may be too difficult for a seal to keep cool when it has that much blubber. It’s as if he's wearing a big wool sweater that he can’t take off. If he can survive the post-weaning fast out on the sand, and wait to head out to sea until he's lost enough weight…he might make it.