Regular surveillance and rapid sequencing in coastal wildlife help researchers identify viral mutations and assess their ...

It captures one moment during a two-hour encounter between four cooperatively hunting orcas and a crabeater seal. The seal, ...

The spring months bring more seals to Piedras Blancas than even the winter breeding season. All 5,000 or so adult females return, along with the same number or so non-breeding juveniles. It’s the ...

Two male elephant seals fight for territory at Ano Nuevo State Park in Pescadero, Calif., on Feb. 6, 2026. The park is set to reopen to visitors Saturday after an avian flu outbreak killed more than a ...

Ano Nuevo State Park in San Mateo County will once again allow the public access to viewing elephant seals on Saturday after about six weeks of restricting access amid an outbreak of avian flu that ...

This season’s Piedras Blancas elephant seal pups are now independent seals. Their mothers weaned them, abruptly, and left on their short spring migration. It’s on the pups now to develop the swimming ...

SANTA CRUZ — The Marine Mammal Center received multiple reports of a northern elephant seal pup on two different Santa Cruz beaches earlier this month. The sightings were the first reports of the ...

Wildlife experts reduced an elephant seal pup with a fishing hook caught in its mouth at Hope Ranch Beach in Santa Barbara County on March 13. The seal pup was taken to the Channel Islands Marine and ...

Two male elephant seals fight for territory at Año Nuevo State Park in Pescadero, Calif., on Saturday, Feb. 6, 2026. The first cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza in a California marine mammal ...

PESCADERO — Every year from late December through March, scientists from the Beltran and Costa labs at UC Santa Cruz set out for the beaches of Año Nuevo State Park. There, thousands of elephant seals ...

An elephant seal bellows at Año Nuevo State Park in Pescadero, California, on Feb. 8, 2026. (Photo by Annie Barker/Stocktonia/CatchLight Local/Report for America ...