Harbor Seals

Bair Island has a GREAT selection of “Golden Retriever of the Bay”

Harbor Seals are wonderful, playful creatures of salt water in the San Francisco Bay. I’ve been taking pictures of them for a few years and figure it was time for them to get a page of their own.

Strike a pose!

Friendly Pups…

San Francisco Bay has both Harbor Seals and California Sea Lions. In Redwood City we only have the smaller, no ears, cuter Harbor Seals. The red color seems to be specific to the Bay Area and is thought to be from what they eat. I don’t know or care, I like the variety of colors.

There are 4 “pods” near Redwood City. The closest is in turns 7/8/9 of the corkscrew slough, closest to the main Redwood Creek channel. The Harbor Seals in this area are somewhat used to seeing humans – stand up paddle boards, kayaks and rowers. BUT they still spook easily and “flush” back to the water if you get too close or move fast.

On the other hand, sometimes they really want to figure out who you are! They sniff your boat and sometimes try to climb on board. Since they are a bit heavier than the normal rower, it’s not a good idea to have them join you in the boat. 🙂

They are curious, friendly and just nice animals. We have seen up to 60 seals at one time in this pod. The other pods are not as popular and the seals there seem to be less used to humans (but I have to assume the seals go from pod-to-pod since there can be only a few to 60 in the main pod).

In April the pups are born. The really newborns are all wrinkled and both the baby and mom are really tired and don’t move much. The babies need help swimming and sometimes ride on their mom’s back.

Mud is everywhere and gets everywhere

Are you coming for food or not?

Short video clips from the Nursery

Not hard to figure out that they are related

Mom was slapping her nursing baby. I wonder if it’s that time of life where “if you bite me one more time, no more nursing!”

Looks loving? Not so much. This was someone else’s pup that was trying to visit another mom and she was having none of it.

The Kiss

Probably a very “fresh” baby. The mom was very tired and didn’t really want to move, but they did.

The two of them were up in the mud but the mom wanted to go to the water. At first the baby didn’t follow her, so mom came back up and AGAIN showed the way.