Valentine's Special: Pinniped Passion

[John David Cubit]

Winter is mating season for northern elephant seals on the coast of California. From December through February thousands of elephant seals climb up the beaches at their rookery sites to set up harems, give birth, nurse pups, and mate. It's a raucous scene of territorial fights and heavy-duty mating. All photos were taken with a Sony a900 and Sony 70-400mm F4-5.6 G lens.

1. A two-ton harem master begins the seduction.


2. Passion peaks.


3. Coital bliss.


Happy Valentine's Day

[Wildieswife]

Well - you've put a big happy smile on my face! These are great images and observations of behaviour. Wonderful!

Pat


PS - there's no accounting for taste, is there

[jbtaylor]

Nothing like elephant seal porn. You know what they say, big nose...
I addition, I think you have the steps out of sequence ("set up harems, give birth, nurse pups, and mate").
Nice images. How could you stand the smell?
JT

[John David Cubit]

Nothing like elephant seal porn. You know what they say, big nose...
I addition, I think you have the steps out of sequence ("set up harems, give birth, nurse pups, and mate").
Nice images. How could you stand the smell?
JT

With a 3-shot limit for these posts, I had to leave out some steps. For wider coverage, from harems to weaning, see:
http://cubit.smugmug.com/Other/Elephant ... 377_WFrKZt

As for the smell, there was virtually none. The animals are not feeding at this time, so there's no fishy poop. This is quite a feat for the females, who give birth and nurse their pups to weaning over a 5 week period while not eating--they are on the beach the whole time, living off their fat reserves and using special physiological adaptations to conserve water.

[jbtaylor]

Checked out your gallery.
Fine work indeed.
Certainly not too much work for the camera and lens. They performed well.
JT

[John David Cubit]

Checked out your gallery.
Fine work indeed.
Certainly not too much work for the camera and lens. They performed well.
JT

Thanks, JT. I am very satisfied with the Sony 70-400 lens. It has received very good reviews, and my copy has worked very well, much better and more dependably than the Canon equivalent used by my fellow nature photographers. The a900 has also worked very well when there's adequate light--it is noisy at high ISOs. This is my only complaint because it constrains action photography in the early mornings, late afternoons, and very cloudy days. I'm hoping that Sony will soon catch up with the recent advances by Nikon and Canon in high ISO performance of full-frame sensors.
---John

[Greg Beetham]

Nicely photographed John. It's easy to see how she fell for such a handsome chap.
Greg

[Birma]

Fabulous shots John - I enjoyed looking through the whole set on your site.