Elephant Seal Lurking

Northern elephant seals sleep in the open ocean, and they do it while falling. EEG recordings published by Kendall-Bar and colleagues in 2023 captured seals napping in bouts of about ten minutes during descending glides, drifting into slow downward spirals as the paralysis of REM sleep took hold. Out at sea they average roughly two hours of sleep a day, compared with about ten hours ashore on beaches like this one near San Simeon. A seal resting quietly at the surface is between shifts of a life spent mostly in the dark and the cold.