DISCOVERY 1969

[Music] [Applause] these are elephant seals the largest member of the seal family they can weigh as much as 5 000 pounds when fully grown and these are california sea lions the kind that are trained to perform tricks they're actually quite different from true seals we're going to find out how to tell them apart and we'll learn more about their unusual habits and abilities today as discovery takes a look at the remarkable world of seals and sea lions [Music] [Applause] [Music] discovery 69 the award-winning program for young people with bill owen and virginia gibson [Music] hi and welcome to discovery we're in california today to see the home grounds of some of the most remarkable mammals in the ocean seals and sea lions we're at abc's marine world near san francisco to take a close look at some of these animals who normally make their homes on the rocky islands off our west coast shoreline most of the performing seals we see in public shows are actually sea lions a species called california sea lion they're used because they're highly intelligent and easy to train [Music] there are several differences between sea lions and true seals but the easiest way is to tell them apart or by their ears and their flippers sea lions have ears on the outside of their head and are very easy to see and their hind flippers bend forward when they walk on land they can move fairly fast using both their hind and their front flippers for balancing [Applause] but a true seal like this big elephant seal has no visible ears instead it has small openings on the side of its head through which it detects sounds and the seals hind flippers cannot bend forward they point straight back making it easy for them to swim but a lot harder to get around on land they have to pull their hindquarters forward hump their backs and push ahead they move almost like a big caterpillar also the seals front flippers are much shorter than the sea lions another interesting difference seals have their toes at the end of their flippers but sea lion's toes are in the middle of their flippers so the next time you see a performing seal look to see if it has ears and tail flippers that bend forward if it does then you know that it's actually a sea lion and not a seal seals and sea lions are very closely related they're both part of the same family that scientists call pinapedia which means fin-footed because they both have webbed toes or fins for their feet they're descended from the same ancestors as dogs and bears you can see the resemblance in their faces and the sounds that sea lions make are actually called barking long ago the seals and sea lions were land mammals as they began to hunt more of their food in the water gradually over millions of years their bodies became adapted to enable them to swim and live in the water although they are now marine mammals they can leave the ocean for long periods of time they must go on shore in order to give birth to their babies which are called pups and to nurse them unlike other sea mammals such as whales who spend all their lives in the water the seals and sea lions are half and half able to live both on land and in the water seals and sea lions can dive to great depths some as far as 1500 feet down and they can remain underwater for long periods of time by conserving their oxygen supply some scientists feel that seals and sea lions may even have a natural echo locating system the same as porpoises it works just the way our man-made sonar does the animals send out a series of high-frequency sounds that bounce back off objects or fish underwater by following the echo of these sounds they can avoid obstacles navigate and even catch their food in very dark waters because there is some difference of opinion on the subject scientists are currently making underwater experiments to find out whether this ability is actually present in seals and sea lions [Music] we'll find out more about their remarkable habits on land and in the water and we'll see how young sea lions are trained to perform we'll do that in just a minute [Music] pedro pedro pedro this big fellow is called pedro he's an elephant seal almost four years old they're called elephant seals because when the males grow older they develop long noses that hang down in front like an elephant's trunk pedro has been in marine world for six months but he's only been in training for one month his trainer sunny allen is teaching him to perform he grow up i just watched pedro for about i guess a good month at first pedro was very aggressive and this is good in an animal when they're aggressive to start with because they're very alert and you always have their attention when you know that you're going to start draining an animal you build up their fat tissue in their body because you're going to have to cut their feet down and have this hunger drive in them so you can train them in this two week period of time every time that he was fed or a fish was taken from my hand a whistle was blown and this is a bridging stimulus it bridges the gap between the time that he's done the behavior correctly and the time will be rewarded and it tells him that he's done it right if he doesn't hear the whistle he doesn't receive a reward [Music] all right the best performers because they're the easiest to train and work with are the california sea lions they're found only out here along our west coast line yeah way up up up up up up oh boy that's good you're getting better [Music] trainer homer snow has been working with seals and sea lions for over 35 years i've captured of course many many seals many sea lions the thing to do is to in selecting an animal that i'm going to train personally is uh in studying the animals as a group i may get eight or ten animals in a pin and uh they're not feeding because they do not eat right away when they come into captivity they're used to catching their own live food and to take the dead fish is quite a little trick to get them eating but for the first few days why they rest and and sun themselves and they're given access to water but i begin noticing and watching very shortly i will notice one animal that is who can't take its eyes on me that that animal i've already established an affinity for it and they have the animal has established some sort of a lesson with me and that's the animal that i will pick up as number one animal [Music] all right green way up up up up up bring it up up higher seals and sea lions are able to do much more than perform for us scientists are discovering many new ways in which these animals can help human beings [Music] for several years the us navy has been conducting experiments with sea lions as well as porpoises because of their ability to detect and locate sounds underwater at the naval undersea research center in california this sea lion named roxy was trained to locate and pick up a ring on command from the bottom of a training tank the ring has a pinger a small box that emits a constant tone a sound beacon that the sea lion can hear and follow underwater after she'd been trained in a 20-foot tank on shore roxie was taken out to the open sea to see if she'd be able to locate and retrieve the ring at a depth of over a hundred feet [Music] in later experiments this same sea lion was able to retrieve the ring from a depth of 240 feet because of their ability to respond to this type of sound beacon that tells them when and where to dive the navy is training sea lions as well as porpoises to act as messengers between human divers on the bottom and ships on the surface carrying messages tools and other supplies back and forth as often as needed here in california there are many protected areas where no one is allowed to harm or capture the animals now their population seems to be growing and large colonies of seals and sea lions return each year to their island breeding grounds these islands where seals have their young are called rookeries scientists can get special permission to work there and observe the animals we're going with some scientists on an expedition to one of the offshore rookery islands where many thousands of seals and sea lions live and we'll do that in just a minute [Music] we're traveling on board this special 75-foot boat used by marine world for research and collection of ocean specimens we're about to anchor off the shore of a small rookery island called onion nuevo which is spanish for new year because the island is very rocky our large boat can't get in close to shore instead we'll use this smaller boat to make the half mile trip into the shore the island less than a mile long lies off the northern california coast about 75 miles south of san francisco it's a favorite breeding ground for harbor seals and stellar sea lions there are also some california sea lions there the island itself is very small it was formerly a coast guard lighthouse station that was no longer being used when the seals and sea lions began to use the island as a breeding ground the state of california protected it to allow the animals to thrive now only scientists are allowed on shore in order to study the animals in their natural environment the seals and sea lions have completely taken over the island living on the rocky slopes and beaches and swimming in the surf you can even find them living inside the abandoned buildings on shore [Music] since these rookery islands have been protected by law the seal and sea lion colonies have grown from a few hundred animals to over twenty thousand there are different areas on the island where the individual species congregate these northern elephant seals prefer the sandy beach rather than the rocky cliffs the big males called bulls are about 12 years old some of them are as much as 16 feet long and they weigh up to 4 tons 8 000 pounds the females are smaller only about 12 feet long and weighing about 2 000 pounds at this time of year the elephant seals are going through various stages of molting or shedding their skin the scientists that are currently working on ano nuevo island are from the university of california at santa cruz they stay on the island for as long as three months at a time to observe the animal's behavior count the population and mark individuals so they can be identified one of the members of this scientific team is dr bernie labeouf who is getting ready to tag some elephant seals [Music] some of our main problems involves trying to differentiate one individual from the next we mark the animals by mixing peroxide with lady's hair dye we put in a plastic container shake it up and then sneak up on the sleeping animal and draw large two foot high letters on the animal's back however because the animals molt once a year they lose this temporary mark in order to identify them from one year to the next we put either plastic or metal tags on the hind flippers [Music] the bulls haul out on land at any nuevo in early december they immediately start to fight with each other with the aim of setting up some sort of peck order about two weeks later in mid-december the females gradually start to haul out on land until you get about three or four hundred females on land when the female first arrives she's pregnant six days later she delivers a single pup she nurses this pup for about 21 days at the end of this time she departs for the sea and in so doing she weans her pup now when pup is first born he wear he weighs anywhere from 60 to 100 pounds during this time he's 21 days he triples his body weight for the next two months the pup doesn't do much more than sleep at the end of this time he starts to go out into the shallows and swim around and possibly eat we don't know along with the elephant seals there are california sea lions harbor seals and stellar sea lions that live on different parts of this island along these rocks are the stellar sea lions bachelor's quarters where the very young or very old males live these are males who are not able to claim a territory of their own where they can mate with females because these animals are much more shy they can't be approached as closely as the elephant seals so the scientists have built wooden shelters called blinds from which they can observe these seals and sea lions they have to creep up to the blinds very carefully so as not to disturb the animals in each of these bachelor's quarters there may be as many as 200 different males most of the time the young males are playing with each other by sparring practicing the kind of fighting that they'll be doing later in life when they must claim their own territories for breeding [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] a great deal of the scientist's time is spent on the other side of the island this is the main breeding ground the rookery for hundreds of stellar sea lions in order to reach the blind on top of the cliff where the stellars prefer to stay the scientists have to climb down a steep incline and carefully crawl up the other side the scientists have made that climb so many times they can do it in the dark [Applause] during the breeding season we try to maintain continuous coverage so it means spending as much as 16 hours a day in the blind the large bulls which are so impressive weigh approximately one ton or two thousand pounds and the females are about half that size [Applause] they haul out in late may or early june and they set up territories they adopt a geographical site which they defend from each other [Applause] when the females begin arriving they will distribute themselves on the rookery a few days after the female has arrived she too is pregnant when she arrives she will give birth to a single pup and then she will nurse this pup [Music] the stellar sea lion unlike the elephant seal will will mate only once and this is usually with the male whose territory she happens to be in she goes to sea and feeds for several days leaving her pup on the island when the female returns from feeding she hauls out on the rookery and calls to the pup now we we're not quite sure about this but either the pup recognizes the sound of the mother or the mother recognizes the sound of her own pup amidst the sound of several hundred other pups that are also there in the record she will usually be met by a number of different pups most of which she'll reject for her own pup which she will then accept and take to a certain place on the rookery and nurse it long before there was any scientific interest in them seals were hunted and slaughtered by the thousands for their valuable furs and oils this indiscriminate killing reached such proportions that many species were almost totally wiped out it's important for all of us to be concerned about protecting and preserving these and any other creatures that are threatened with destruction not only because they're valuable for scientific research but to help maintain the balance of nature if only one species of seal is wiped out it may directly affect the life of a totally different creature that depends on the seal for food or protection changing this natural balance can ultimately have an effect on every one of us even though it may not always be easy to see there's an interrelationship among all living things on earth a responsibility we all must share we'll be back in just a minute [Music] [Applause] [Music] we hope you've enjoyed today's visit to marine world in san francisco if you'd like to find out more about the remarkable world of seals and sea lions then ask your librarian for any of these books all kinds of seals by bernice cohn rookery island by gary dates and this book seals of the world by gavin maxwell be sure to be with us next week for another exciting program as discovery continues to discover the world bye bye bye the discovery production unit's domestic transportation and promotional consideration provided by united airlines [Music] this has been the jules power production in association with abc news