Southern Elephant Seals, also known as “sea elephants” locally, are found on the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic islands. These are the biggest among all the Antarctic seals and during the 19^th and 20^th century, they were hunted for their oil. Thankfully, active participation by wildlife enthusiasts ensured timely intervention and their numbers have been steadily growing since then. Today, one can see hundreds of them throughout the Southern Ocean, lying around in muddy depressions and sunbathing lazily.

The skin of Southern Elephant seals is silvery-brown in color, and they have large square-shaped heads, very strong front flippers, and flipper tails. Apart from their incredible size, the most noteworthy feature about Southern Elephant seals is the inflatable trunk-like proboscis you can see on the males.

While these seals look comically cumbersome on ground, they are very powerful and swift swimmers. It’s hard to imagine that the animal lumbering around so painfully on land could be so agile in waters. But, unless they are, they wouldn’t be able to catch their prey, such as squid, large fish and sometimes, the penguin.

On their food hunting expeditions, Southern Elephant seals have to dive up to thousands of feet into the waters, and each dive can last up to two hours. Remarkably, they are able to survive so long underwater by lowering their heart rates, occasionally to as little as one beat per minute. Even more remarkably, they can do with very short periods of rest before they set off to dive again.

Between the months of January and April, Southern Elephant seals come out of the sea to molt. This is the process where these seals grow new skin and hair, and this process can last three to five weeks. In this time, they do very little hunting and fall back on their stored blubber to provide energy.

In August and September both males and females arrive at the breeding grounds. The females usually organize themselves into groups known as “harems” and males begin the fierce, often bloody, competition among themselves to win the title of “beachmaster.” And of course, along with it comes the exclusive breeding rights to an entire harem, some of which can contain as many as 50 females!

The young ones, known as “pups” are born during the Austral summer. Sustained by the mother’s milk, which contains 50% fat, they quadruple their weight in just three weeks. Once they are weaned, their mothers return to sea and the pups are left to fend for themselves and learn skills like swimming and hunting. In another six weeks, they too are ready to leave the beaches for a life of adventure in the ocean.