Elephant Seal Mother & Pups

Northern elephant seal pups learn to swim in water exactly like this, in the tidepools and shallow surf at the edge of the rookery, while their mother is still with them. What comes next is abrupt. At the end of lactation she returns to the open ocean and does not come back until the spring molt, and her pups stay ashore and fast completely for a median of about two months, living on the blubber she built for them. Tagged pups at nearby Año Nuevo reached about 90 feet on a first dive and nearly 790 feet within three days, before setting out on the longest unaccompanied first migration known in any mammal.