Elephant Seal
When I am in Australia, I do expect to see some wonderful and different animals…but not one from Antarctica.
I saw it first in Facebook, then on the newspapers, that an elephant seal was found resting at Sorrento Beach.
As you can see, this fellow, who they have named Steven Sealberg, is a little off course.
There were a lot of people gathered to see him.
We finally got to see him. They think he weighs about 2 tons and he isn’t fully grown yet!
The seal had most likely spent a long period hunting in the water and was using a “haul-out period” to rest on the beach.
The mammals hunt far off the coast in deep waters, so that makes them very tired.
He did this several times, flipped sand over himself to keep cool.
Seals can inflict a bite similar to that of a large dog and can move faster than humans.
We weren’t allowed to get too close: “It may feel threatened and react aggressively.”
This one just seemed very tired. 🙂
We stayed til the sun went down.
you missed the part where we went down the beach at 6 o’clock this morning
to find and empty beach, the seal had left at 3am
but came back around lunch time
yay 🙂