Linda L. Richards - Return from Extinction

I could not have imagined the powerful impression they would make on me.

I was traveling in the area, and people were telling me all the sights I needed to be sure to see. Its Californias Central Coast, so there are a lot of sights like that. The charming village of Cambria. The old Hollywood nuttiness of Hearst Castle. The elephant seals. Big Sur. Moonstone Beach. Thewait, waitback up. Elephant seals?

No, really. Everyone I talked to said the same thing. You have to see them.

I had to.

I really couldnt imagine why. Lots of seals. Big deal. Kind of weird-looking even. Not super cute like the harbor seals I would sometimes see near my home in British Columbia. And it wasnt like you could pet them or anything. Or feed them. Or even get super close. Why would I take the time? I didnt have anything against seals. But there is an actual castle right across the street that takes hours to tour. Theres also a cute roadside restaurant that advertises the best burgers in the world.

So visiting the seals wasnt anywhere near the top of my list. And then I forgot about them as I prepared to make my way north toward Monterey and San Francisco via Big Sur.

On that drive a highway sign caught my eye. It read, Vista Point: Elephant Seal Viewing Area. I decided Id stop and have a quick peek. Five minutes. Back on the road in a heartbeat.

I parked the car. I walked a few feet to a boardwalk 5 miles (just over 8 kilometers) long, elevated above the ocean, and looked down. The beach below me was full. At first I thought I was seeing hundreds of dead creatures. Then I looked more closely and saw that the beach was teeming with life.

Flipper to flipper and tail to tail. The number of elephant seals youll see at one time depends entirely on what time of the year you visit. In certain months there is no place you can look and not see a lot of seals doing somethingor a lot of seals doing very little. Linda L. Richards

They were flipper to flipper and tail to tail. They were lying on the beach companionably, flipping sand, and they seemed to be having seal conversations.

That first visit I was intrigued. My trip up the coast got delayed by a whole day as I stayed and lingered and began to learn. There are docents at the Piedras Blancas elephant seal rookery . They volunteer many hours helping the thousands of visitors who come every year to learn about the seals.

Young males sparring in shallow water just offshore are a common sight at most elephant seal rookeries. Like youngsters everywhere, these males are using play to learn the skills they will need as adults. Linda L. Richards

And so I pestered the docents, one after another, asking questions. Every answer I got seemed to give birth to more questions. The spectacle here on the beach near Hearst Castle? This was pretty new, they told me. Not so many years ago, there were no seals on the beach at Piedras Blancas. Not so many years before that there were only 20 to 70 northern elephant seals left in their entire range.

I looked out at the hundreds and hundreds of seals on the beach at that moment. I listened to their honky voices and breathed in their farmyard-type smells and wondered how this had happened. How had this miracle occurred? And when I started to get answers, it dawned on me that it really was, in fact, sort of a miracle. A good-news story in a world where it sometimes seems we hear too much bad news. It was a story filled with wild coincidences and narrow misses and also the helping hands of a few good people with the right idea. Everything had come together in just the right way, and the realization of that made my heart sing. It also made me realize it was a story I wanted to share with you.

And so here we are.

The mature male northern elephant seal has the well-developed proboscis that gives this species its name. Does he look like an elephant? Not really, right? And he uses his proboscis very differently than an elephant might. Still, you cant help but be reminded of the land animal called elephant when you look at one of these guys. sandf320/Getty Images

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Meet the Elephant Seal

My, What a Big Nose You Have!

Y ou dont forget the first time you see an adult male elephant seal. Imagine a creature the size of a small bus, making sounds as loud as an airplane taking off and moving inelegantlythough not always slowlyacross the sand.

Though they look something like the land-based creatures that gave them their name, elephant seals are not related to elephants. Elephant seals can be the same color as elephants. And the nose of the male elephant seal is distinctively large and mobile, but thats where the similarities end.

The elephant seal gets its name from the trunk-like proboscis that mature males have. A proboscis is a flexible snout found in this seal species, elephants and some insects.

You can tell male and female elephant seals apart at a glance. Aside from being so much larger than females, males also have a very noticeable proboscis. (Thats the noselike thing on their faces. It gives them sort of a comical look. To us, I mean. They probably think they look very handsome.) Linda L. Richards

Ready for My Closeup!

Sound designer David Farmer looked high and low for the perfect sound for the baby Orcs in the 2001 movie Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. He found just what he was looking for when he heard a baby elephant seal. If you get a chance to see that classic movie, listen for the baby Orcs. Their sounds in the movie apparently didnt go through any special effectstheyre all pure baby elephant seal!

Annoyingly, even scientists cant agree on the pronunciation of the word, so dont sweat it if you feel like you might not get it right. Some people say pro-boss-us and others pronounce the C as hard: pro-boss-kus. But if you just say nose everyone will know what you mean anyway.

Only mature male elephant seals have a nose big enough to be called a proboscis, which makes it easy to tell the adults from the juveniles. Femaleswho are always much, much smaller than the maleshave that sweet face everyone always thinks of right away when someone says the word seal. They have large eyes, a smooth head and a friendly expression.

Baby elephant seals are entirely helpless and for the first few weeks dont do much besides eat. They have to grow fast! After just one month, their moms will leave them alone on the beach, and theyll have to fend for themselves. Hotshotsworldwide/