NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY

By Richard J. King

A surfer jumps into a wave at Steamer Lane, while a group of sea lions observes from a rocky outcrop just off the beach. A harbor seal is surely in the water, ready to watch the surfer!  Brocken Inaglory, CC BY-SA 4.0, VIA Wikimedia Commons.

One of the best places to learn how to surf in the United States is off Cowell’s Beach in Santa Cruz, California. It’s a wide cove just around the bend from the famous break, “Steamer Lane.” By the time the waves curl around the cliffs and under a copse of cypress trees to Cowell’s Beach, they are gentler—rolling in regular, long, clean lines that are ideal for surfing. Local people of all ages ride the waves there, as well as tourists and groups taking lessons. Cormorants, terns, gulls, and pelicans circle overhead and dive into the surf to feast on schools of anchovies.

In the distance, sea lions bark from their haul-out on the wharf. On occasion, you can see a pod of dolphins or a humpback whale breaching in the distance offshore. Sea otters often hang out in the kelp and have even jumped onto a surfboard a couple of times, making national news. Yet the surfers’ most common animal interaction here is with harbor seals.

The harbor seals at Cowell’s like to pop their heads out of the water and silently watch the scene around them. They observe the action with huge black eyes, which have evolved to see well underwater in low light.

The water is cold at Cowell’s, usually about 55˚ F. The seals manage just fine with their thick layer of blubber. They often spend entire weeks at a time in the ocean. Most of the human surfers in the water wear full wetsuits, often with neoprene hoods and booties. The surfers in their black wetsuits look more than a little seal-like, especially since harbor seals and people are about the same length. Many worry that sharks in the area think surfers paddling on a board look just like seals, a favorite prey.

Marine biologists recognize a total of nineteen “true” seals worldwide. True seals, in contrast to the sea lions, fur seals, and walruses, do not have external earflaps and, unlike those just mentioned, their smaller fore flippers can’t rotate forward to enable them to walk on land. The harbor seal, also known as the common seal and by other names, lives around the coasts and islands of the North Pacific, from Japan to Alaska, and down to southern California. Harbor seals also live in the Atlantic Ocean, from the Carolina coast northwards to the Arctic and along the coasts of Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia, and eastward to the English Channel.

Surfing as a sport was introduced to Californians in 1885 by three Hawaiian princes who were visiting Santa Cruz. In this photo from 1898, a Hawaiian surfer carries his board into the water, eyeing the waves off Waikiki Beach. Photo by Frank Davey (1860–1922), via Wikimedia.

In Central California at Cowell’s Beach, occasionally harbor seals grow bored of watching the surfers and decide to catch a wave themselves. They glide across the water and ride the inside face of the wave as it curls over before crashing and turning into foam. Sometimes seals wait their turn, catching a wave right after a person does. At other times, a few may share the same wave.

I once had a seal dart directly underneath my board. I worried that my board’s fin had scraped its back, but the seal was probably well aware of where it was and was just playing around. Local surfer and photographer Terry Way told me a seal once slid up onto his paddleboard. Other seals have nipped and tugged at his ankle leash.

Surfing was first introduced to Californians by three Hawaiian princes—nephews of Queen Kapi‘olani—who visited Santa Cruz in 1885. At that time, it’s unlikely that they saw seals in the area. Indigenous people of the various Ohlone tribes, who have lived for more than 10,000 years along this coast, hunted seals and other marine mammals in small numbers. Yet it was Russian, British, and American hunters who inflicted nearly irreparable damage when they sailed to the West Coast to hunt seals, sea lions, and otters for their pelts and oil. Harbor seals did not provide much oil because of their smaller size, but their spotted skins were prized for luxury clothing. Meanwhile, fishermen in the late 1800s and much of the 1900s shot seals to protect “their” fish.

Slowly, fashions changed, people switched from animals to petroleum for oils, kelp habitat returned, and general public opinion shifted to mostly view these animals as cute. Big-wave legend Richard Schmidt, who started the first surf school in Santa Cruz in 1978, told me that harbor seals are the “mascots of surfers” because they are so much like dogs in the water. Schmidt has observed that, along with so much of the marine life along the California Coast, seal populations have grown healthier since the 1980s.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act (1972) had a huge positive impact, making it illegal to approach these animals. Surfing off Santa Cruz, I’ve yet to see anyone paddle toward a seal. When they come in close contact, it is because the seal has approached the human surfer. The rookeries for the Cowell’s harbor seals—where they mate, give birth, and molt—are far from the crowds, adding another layer of protection. So, generations of harbor seals have now been swimming over to Cowell’s for decades for the surfing entertainment. Well, okay, probably for the fish, too.

Adult and juvenile harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii) hauled out on the beach in Elkhorn Slough, California, across Monterey Bay from Santa Cruz. Marine biologists have identified five subspecies of harbor seal, separated by their geography. “Dawn” from Saratoga, CA, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

For previous Animals in Sea History, visit seahistory.org or check out the book Ocean Bestiary: Meeting Marine Life from Abalone to Orca to Zooplankton, which is a revised collection of 19 years of this column!