page_title: Northern elephant seal
section_title: Range and ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Northern elephant seal / Range and ecology
caption_attribution_description: English: Northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) at Point Reyes National Seashore, California.
context_page_description: The northern elephant seal is one of two species of elephant seal. It is a member of the family Phocidae. Elephant seals derive their name from their great size and from the male's large proboscis, which is used in making extraordinarily loud roaring noises, especially during the mating competition. Sexual dimorphism in size is great. Correspondingly, the mating system is highly polygynous; a successful male is able to impregnate up to 50 females in one season.
context_section_description: The northern elephant seal lives in the eastern Pacific Ocean. They spend most of their time at sea, and usually only come to land to give birth, breed, and molt.  These activities occur at rookeries that are located on offshore islands or remote mainland beaches.  The majority of these rookeries are in California and northern Baja California, ranging from Point Reyes National Seashore, California to Isla Natividad, Mexico. Significant breeding colonies exist at Channel Islands, Año Nuevo State Reserve, Piedras Blancas Light, Morro Bay State Park and the Farallon Islands in the US, and Isla Guadalupe, Isla Benito del Este and Isla Cedros in Mexico. In recent decades the breeding range has extended northwards. In 1976 the first pup was found on Point Reyes and a breeding colony established there in 1981. Since the mid-1990s some breeding has been observed at Castle Rock in Northern California and Shell Island off Oregon, and in January 2009 the first elephant seal births were recorded in British Columbia at Race Rocks. The California breeding population is now demographically isolated from the population in Baja California.
  Northern elephant seals exhibit extreme sexual dimorphism in their feeding behaviours.  When the males leave their rookeries, they migrate northwards to their feeding grounds along the continental shelf from Washington to the western Aleutians in Alaska. The males mostly feed on benthic organisms on the ocean floor. When the females leave their rookeries, they head north or west into open ocean, and forage across a large area in the northeastern Pacific. They have been recorded as far west as Hawaii. Female elephant seals feed mainly on pelagic organisms in the water column.
  Vagrant elephant seals possibly appear on tropical regions such as at Mariana Islands. Historical occurrences of elephant seal presence, residential or occasional, in western North Pacific are fairly unknown. There have been two records of vagrants visiting to Japanese coasts; a male on Niijima in 1989 (reference introducing a visit by a North Pacific right whale in 2011), and a young seal on beaches in Hasama, Tateyama in 2001 (where another right whale was seen in 2000). A 2.5 meter female was found on Sanze beach, Tsuruoka, Yamagata in October 2017, making it the first record from Sea of Japan. This individual was severely weakened but showing signs of recovery after receiving medications at Kamo Aquarium, and the aquarium is discussing whether or not to release her.
  Some individuals have been observed on the coast of northeast Asia. Certain individuals established haul-out sites at the Commander Islands in the early 2000s; however, due to aggressive interactions with local Steller sea lions, long-term colonization is not expected.
  Female elephant seals forage in the open ocean, while male elephant seals forage along the continental shelf. Males usually dive straight down to the ocean floor and stay at the bottom foraging for benthic prey. The females hunt for pelagic prey in the open ocean, and dive deeper (up to 1735 m, though on average about 500 m) and stay down longer than the males. Northern elephant seals eat a variety of prey, including mesopelagic fish such as myctophids, deep-water squid, Pacific hake, pelagic crustaceans, relatively small sharks, rays, and ratfish. Octopoteuthis deletron squid are a common prey item, one study found this species in the stomachs of 58% of individuals sampled off the coast of California. A female northern elephant seal was documented in 2013 by a deep sea camera at a depth of 894 m (2,933 ft), where it consumed a Pacific hagfish, slurping it up from the ocean floor. The event was reported by a Ukrainian boy named Kirill Dudko, who further reported the find to scientists in Canada. Elephant seals do not need to drink, as they get their water from food and metabolism of fats.
  While hunting in the dark depths, elephant seals seem to locate their prey at least partly by vision; the bioluminescence of some prey animals can facilitate their capture. Elephant seals do not have a developed a sy
caption: Adult male northern elephant seal at Point Reyes National Seashore, California
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 7D", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.3 (Macintosh)", "Image DateTime": "2013:02:07 18:27:36", "Image ExifOffset": "208", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "798", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "10878", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/100", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "250", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2013:02:02 21:55:03", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2013:02:02 21:55:03", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "415241/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "230", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "48", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "62871/11", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "331079/57", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "1470800376", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[140, 400, 0/0, 0/0]", "EXIF LensModel": "EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM +2.0x"}