A herd of elephant seals has taken over this popular California beach during the government shutdown.
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00Right now there's I think a little over 50 adults on that beach and we know as
00:17of yesterday there were 43 pups so we're talking about a hundred animals right
00:22now just on that beach.
00:53This year, mostly because of storm activity and king tides, a lot of seals
01:12were displaced from other locations around the park. We have probably close
01:17to 2,000 animals around the park and they found Drake's Beach which was a
01:22parking area we had closed due to some minor flooding. They've now taken it on
01:28that beach and so we're kind of working on how do we continue to protect them
01:34while the the pups are nursing off of the mothers but still let some public
01:39activity go on down there but not on the beach.
01:47We're going to close a portion of the parking spaces closest to the beach but
02:01we're going to have a cadre of park rangers and volunteer docents there that
02:06will lead some guided walks. We're not going to have any access on to the beach
02:09but we're going to walk the stretch of a sidewalk that's between the parking lot
02:14and the beach where the seals are located and give people this incredible
02:19opportunity to see these seals close.
02:36What happens next is a really good question because what we know probably
02:41by late March early April most of the adults will have left the beach. The pups
02:47will have been weaned from their mothers. They'll be leaving shortly thereafter.
02:51The long term is a big question mark at this point.