A stair-climbing, road-crossing, peripatetic elephant seal named Emerson is making life interesting for Oak Bay police, nature lovers, dog walkers, school children and the throngs that come to gawk at him every day.
Early Wednesday morning, Emerson was sprawled on the grassy boulevard near the marina while police cars with flashing lights protected him from passing cars and cyclists.
On Thursday evening, Emerson was off again, spending the night snoozing between a pair of parked cars on the far side of Beach Drive under surveillance by concerned police.
Emerson slipped across the road and back onto the boulevard Friday morning during shift change at the police department.
Then, acting on advice from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, officers used poster boards to corral him back to the beach.
“He climbs the stairs with ease and then he kind of rolls back down,” Const. Cheryl Goard said Friday. “For a 300-pound seal, he’s very mobile.”
Jaywalking is in his genes.
Emerson was born Jan. 31, 2022 in Bowman Bay in Deception Pass State Park in Puget Sound.
His mother, Elsie May, was introduced to human beings at a young age and visited parking lots, climbed onto the decks of homes and tried to get into RVs, according to goskagit.com, an online news organization in Washington state.
Elsie May stayed with her pup for the first month, then swam off on Feb. 26, 2022, leaving Emerson to learn to swim and be on his own. Like his mother, he moved around the beach and the picnic tables and even visited the campground.
He won the hearts of many local residents, including a group of about 25 volunteers who spent more than 1,500 hours watching over him during his first moult in April.
In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a group of volunteers moved him to an undisclosed location to keep him safe.
“I’m well aware of his antics. We’ve been tracking him over the last four weeks,” Paul Cottrell, marine mammal co-ordinator for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said Friday.
In mid-May, DFO relocated the young elephant seal after he showed up on an unleashed-dog walking path near Whiffin Spit in Sooke.
Emerson was taken to an isolated location farther up the coast, but decided to moult at the very public beach in Oak Bay.
“We’ve been monitoring him, doing our best to let him do this moult, but he seems to have a penchant for attention,” Cottrell said.
The pinniped expert believes the huge high evening tides this week have enabled Emerson to get up on the sidewalk.
He’s hoping to put a stop to Emerson’s wanderings.
On Friday afternoon, fisheries enforcement officers and police put up barriers blocking beach entrances to prevent Emerson from climbing the stairs and and blocked the other areas off with fencing.
The good news is that the seal is nearing the end of his moult — his new fur coat, called a pelage, has come in.
“We’re confident that, definitely in the next week, and hopefully in the next couple of days, Emerson will get back to the ocean and start foraging,” said Cottrell.
”He looks great. He’s come through it and it will be interesting next year to see where he shows up.
“The U.S. folks are hoping he moults down there next year but we’ll see where he ends up.”
It’s rare for the public to have a chance to see an elephant seal moult. It’s also challenging when the animals pick populated areas where dogs are off-leash and small children may get too close, said Cottrell.
Elephant seals can be aggressive and cranky. When they moult, they are not just shedding their fur, they are shedding their entire skin, which is really uncomfortable.
Cottrell said young elephant seals often pick the “craziest spots” to moult.
DFO would like members of the public to report moulting elephant seals and distressed and entangled marine mammals to its marine mammal incident hotline at 1-800-465-4336. The line is operated 24 hours a day.
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