California: these elephant seals are taking advantage of the shutdown

A herd of elephant seals has taken over this popular California beach during the government shutdown.

Transcript

00:00Right now there's I think a little over 50 adults on that beach and we know as

00:17of yesterday there were 43 pups so we're talking about a hundred animals right

00:22now just on that beach.

00:53This year, mostly because of storm activity and king tides, a lot of seals

01:12were displaced from other locations around the park. We have probably close

01:17to 2,000 animals around the park and they found Drake's Beach which was a

01:22parking area we had closed due to some minor flooding. They've now taken it on

01:28that beach and so we're kind of working on how do we continue to protect them

01:34while the the pups are nursing off of the mothers but still let some public

01:39activity go on down there but not on the beach.

01:47We're going to close a portion of the parking spaces closest to the beach but

02:01we're going to have a cadre of park rangers and volunteer docents there that

02:06will lead some guided walks. We're not going to have any access on to the beach

02:09but we're going to walk the stretch of a sidewalk that's between the parking lot

02:14and the beach where the seals are located and give people this incredible

02:19opportunity to see these seals close.

02:36What happens next is a really good question because what we know probably

02:41by late March early April most of the adults will have left the beach. The pups

02:47will have been weaned from their mothers. They'll be leaving shortly thereafter.

02:51The long term is a big question mark at this point.