California Sea Lion
Zalophus californianus · Marine life
California Sea Lion
San Diego, 6 March 2026
A California Sea Lion from above, flippers spread flat against the sand at La Jolla - a resting posture, not a distressed one. The colony here hauls out on the beach every afternoon, and the town has learned to live with the smell.
Sea lions haul out in large, loosely social groups mainly to rest, warm up and avoid the sharks and orcas that hunt them in open water, rather than for any single shared purpose.
California Sea Lion
San Diego, 6 March 2026
A California Sea Lion on the rocks at La Jolla, resident on the Southern California coast year-round and the loud, mobile, doglike-faced pinniped most people picture at a marina or a pier.
The external ear flaps, visible here, are the simplest way to tell a sea lion from a true seal at a glance. True seals have none, just a small hole. This is also the seal of the circus and the aquarium show, which is what those flexible flippers and that intelligence get it.
California Sea Lion pup calling
San Diego, 6 March 2026
A sea lion pup calling on the rocks at La Jolla, one of dozens in a crowded haul-out. The pups are born in June on beaches like this one and stay for the best part of a year, while the mothers go to sea to feed and come back to nurse.
Pups and mothers find each other almost entirely by voice. Each pup's call is individually distinctive enough that a female can pick her own out of dozens of barking animals after a foraging trip that may have kept her away for days.
California Sea Lion grooming
San Diego, 6 March 2026
A California Sea Lion on the rocks at La Jolla, a rear flipper reaching up to scratch. This coast is the species' home range, from British Columbia to Mexico, and the colony here hauls out on the rocks and beaches within yards of the town.
Sea lions are unusually flexible for a marine mammal because, unlike true seals, they can rotate their hind flippers forward underneath the body, which is also what lets them walk, or at least shuffle, on land. That same flexibility makes routine grooming look almost acrobatic.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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