Elephant seals are unlike most mammals which shed their skin and hair all year
long and molt only once during the year. This "catastrophic molt" happens over
a period of severals weeks when females and juveniles return from the sea, to
the beach where they were born, in April and May. All the images taken at Piedras
Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery are of the females and juveniles laying on the beach
basking in the sun. The immature males will not return until summer and the adult
males late in the summer early fall.

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