There was a Northern elephant seal on Cabrillo Beach on Wednesday. On the inner beach, not far from the fishing pier. It was just laying there in the sun. Every now and then it shifted into a more comfortable position and sometimes it shoveled sand on its back with one of its front flippers.

It was obviously a young of the year, because if its size. That means it was likely born sometime in January of this year, maybe a few days earlier, maybe a few days later. It was probably born in one of the rookeries to the South of us, like Cedros, Benitos, Guadalupe or Coronados Islands off Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. San Pedro is close to the route those animals take to their feeding grounds in the open Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii for the females and along the continental shelf off the Aleutian Islands for the males. If it was born in one of the nearby rookeries like San Nicholas, Santa Barbara or San Miguel Islands off the Southern California coast, it swam the wrong way to get here. And if it came from one of the northern rookeries like Piedras Blancas, Ano Nuevo or the Farallon Islands it swam the wrong way a long way.

It weighed approximately 70 lbs at birth and gained approximately 10 lbs a day while feeding on its mother’s rich milk. For four weeks. On pretty much exactly the 28^th day after the pup’s birth, the mother suddenly made her way into the water and swam off without looking back. The pup continued calling for its mother for a while, moved around the beach looking for her, but eventually snuggled up to a group of other weaners whose mothers had also departed. And they waited. And waited. As the days and weeks went by, and more and more females left, they realized that their mothers weren’t coming back. They dodged the males that were fighting each other for the right to mate with the departing females and eventually began to explore the water themselves.

For the first weeks after birth they were not equipped to live in the water, but they were now undergoing physiological changes that will allow them as adults to dive to a depth of over one mile and to remain submerged for over two hours. They began spending more and more time in the tide pools near their rookery and eventually, one after the other, they took off for the feeding grounds of their species, thousands of miles across the open ocean. They follow a map implanted into their brains countless generations ago and on their own find a place where they belong but where they have never been. And the same map will lead them back to their rookery when it comes time to molt their skin in a few months time.

If our little seal stayed too long, it might have been accessed by rescue professionals and taken to a rehab facility if it was determined to be underweight or sick or injured. But it seemed fine; it probably just rested for a while and then continued on its solitary journey.