Unknown: Music.
Jane: This is But Why: a Podcast for Curious Kids from
Vermont Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we take
questions from curious kids just like you, and we find answers.
When I was little, I wanted to be a marine biologist. I wanted
to learn all about the animals that live in the ocean. And I
know I'm not the only one fascinated by marine animals
because we get lots of questions about them. We've done episodes
about fish and jellyfish and whales and sharks and lobsters
and snails, and we've written about even more marine wildlife
in our book, "Do Fish Breathe Underwater?" But we've never
done a podcast episode about pinnipeds. Do you know what a
pinniped is? Don't worry, neither did I. Their name means
fin-footed, and they have flippers for both front and back
legs. They're all meat eaters. They're mammals. They live in
the ocean, but they come on land to rest and to have their
babies, and some of them bark almost like dogs. Maybe, you
guessed it, but pinnipeds are seals, sea lions and walruses.
In today's episode, we're going to talk about the first two, and
next week we'll release a bonus episode just about walruses. To
make this episode one of our producers, Sarah, traveled to a
research and rescue center in Sausalito, California, and
there, Sarah found someone who actually did become a marine
biologist, unlike me.
Adam Ratner: My name is Adam Ratner, and I'm the director of
conservation engagement at the Marine Mammal Center. I study
seals and sea lions. I help to get them better and healthy if
they're sick, and then what we learn from them, I share those
stories so that people all around the world know how they
can help give seals and sea lions and other marine mammals a
second chance at life in a healthy ocean.
Jane: So tell me a little bit about the center and how you do
this work. What kind of facility do you have, and what are we
hearing at the center now?
Unknown: The Marine Mammal Center is the world's largest
marine mammal hospital, so we rescue, rehabilitate and release
sick and injured marine mammals from up and down around 600
miles of California coast. We'll get the animals better, get them
back out into the wild, and while they're in our care at the
hospital, we're learning about them, figuring out what's going
on out in the ocean, and then being able to teach folks around
ways that we can all take action to create a healthy ocean for
marine mammals and people alike. Right now, we've got just under
50 patients that we're taking care of, and you're hearing some
of the baby elephant seals that are at the hospital. These
animals are around two to four months old. They've been
separated from their mom early, and are just really, really
skinny, and they make this kind of weird cackling sound, kind of
like an evil chicken, and that's what's happening in the
background, and they've become really famous for it as well.
Jane: Sea lions are among the animals movie makers used as
models for the fictional creatures you can see on screen
in Jurassic Park, Lord of the Rings and How to Train Your
Dragon. Listen closely, if you watch any of those movies and
see if the velociraptors, orcs and baby dragons sound anything
like what you're hearing in the background at the Marine Mammal
Center. But of course, the babies Adam takes care of aren't
evil, even if he says they do sound like evil chickens. They
make those sounds because they're trying to get the
attention of their parents, or in this case, they're human
caretakers.
Unknown: Correct. Yeah. So elephant seals, particularly the
babies, they have a lot to talk about. Mom and babies certainly
know each other's voice. It makes sense to all of them. From
our perspective, it's always a little hard to know what they're
trying to say. Sometimes it might be them saying that
they're hungry. Sometimes it could be saying, hey, give me a
little bit of space. If one gets too close to them, they are also
babies. So I think sometimes they're just saying, like, hey,
look at me. Look at me. I'm over here. Look at me. Look at me. A
little bit of a mix of all of them, to be honest.
Jane: Why do you have so many what is happening that so many
of them are getting separated from their mothers?
Unknown: So each year, we tend to see a lot of these baby
elephant seals coming into the hospital in the springtime, and
that's because they're born in the winter, basically December
through February. And unfortunately, these baby
elephant seals can get separated from their moms, things like big
storms can separate them, or the babies can struggle to find food
on their own. So what happens is, starting in around February
through April, we see a lot of these really, really skinny
elephant seals coming up onto the beaches, sick and starving.
Luckily, people, families walking along the beach see
these animals, they get on the phone, they call the Marine
Mammal Center, and we can bring them into our hospital and get
them better. They are just really, really underweight. So a
baby elephant seal, the moment they're born, they're already
about the size of a third grader. They weigh 75 pounds.
Jane: Wow.
Adam Ratner: By the time they turn one month old, they should
weigh 300 pounds. So these are massive babies. The elephant
seals we have right now are around two to four months old,
but instead of being 300 pounds, they only weigh around 75 so
they're just skin and bones struggling to find food. They
might not even know how to eat fish yet, so our team of
veterinarians and volunteers are teaching them how to eat fish,
plumping them up, getting them really fat, and making sure that
they're going to be able to go back out to the wild soon.
Jane: In the wild, how long would an elephant seal pups, how
long would one live with its mother?
Adam Ratner: So it's a really short period of time with mom.
So elephant seals actually spend only one month with their mom.
That's it.
Jane: Wow.
Adam Ratner: All they do is they sit side by side with them up on
the beach, and they drink their mom's milk. And every day they
drink their mom's milk, they're gonna gain eight pounds. So they
get super fat in this one month, and then mom takes off and
doesn't come back. And the pups up on the beach, never having
been in the water before, so it doesn't know how to swim. It's
never seen a fish, it's never eaten anything, and they have to
learn it all by themselves. And what's amazing is that they do.
They use a lot of that 300 pounds, those fat reserves, to
give them the time that they need to kind of practice and
learn, and are able, within around a month to two months, to
be able to head out into the ocean on their own. The problem
that we see with our animals is, if they don't get to that 300
pounds, they don't have all that fat. There was reserves to give
them the time. So they're really struggling to just simply
survive, and they don't have that time to kind of learn and
spend time in school, if you will, in that kind of right
mental space.
Jane: So how do you at the center make sure that you're
teaching them how to do the things they need to do in the
wild when they're not in the wild and they're actually
interacting with humans.
Adam Ratner: So it's a really tough balance here at the
hospital, because we don't want any of these animals getting
used to people. So all the work that we're doing is trying to
keep them wild. So when it comes to swimming, we're just giving
them access to the water. We have different pens and pools
that are different depths. So they can just kind of get into
it a little bit and feel wet. They can dive down real deep.
When it comes to food, we make them a delicious fish smoothie
that we can pump directly into their bodies. And then once
they're able to start eating fish, they all go to what we
call fish school. So we take a fish, we put it on a string, and
from a distance, we drag that fish around the pool. And over
time, the elephant seals get curious, just like babies. They
see this kind of shiny thing moving, and they want to explore
it, so they touch it with their mouth. They might put it in
their mouth. Then all of a sudden, they realize fish is
delicious, and they are willing to start chasing after it. And
we can just throw the fish into the pool, let the animals fight
over it, and that's when we know they've graduated from fish
school and are on their way ready for release.
Jane: So only a little bit different from how we humans eat
in our own families.
Adam Ratner: Exactly.
Jane: While we're talking about these elephant seals, can I ask
you a few of the questions that kids have sent us about seals
more generally?
Adam Ratner: Please.
Rowan: My name is Rowan. I'm six years old, and I live in North
Carolina. Why do seals bark?
Unknown: Seals and sea lions all have different sounds that they
make, and with sea lions, those are the ones that bark a little
bit more, kind of like a dog. Seals, like the elephant seals,
have this cackling sound. Harbor seals have this more kind of
like ma, ma call that they make. So just like with people, every
type of animal has a different voice, and it's how they talk to
each other. They definitely know what they're saying. Moms and
babies know each other's voices, just like if you're at the
grocery store with your mom, and you turn around and you realize
that you don't know where your mom is right now. You can just
scream, Hey, Mom, where are you? And mom knows exactly your
voice. And you reunite at the cereal aisle. Same thing happens
with these elephant seals out on the beach. So it's how they talk
to each other and communicate.
Lucy: My name is Lucy. I live in Columbia, South Carolina, and I
want to know why are seals gray?
Unknown: So seals and sea lions can be actually all different
types of colors. So with the elephant seals, for example,
that we have at the hospital, they're born with a black fur.
So that first one month, they've got this thick black fur. And
that's actually going to help keep them warm, because you
think about like wearing a black T shirt outside on a sunny day.
It absorbs all that sun. It helps those elephant seals. When
they turn one month old, they get rid of the black fur, and
they get a gray fur or a silver fur. And other seals and sea
lions have different things as well. So harbor seals are
actually spotted. They're one of the only spotted seals or sea
lions you'll find in the United States. So each one's a little
bit different. Gray, just in terms of all different kind of
animals in the wild, helps you blend in in the water a little
bit. So if you're kind of at the surface, you can blend in a
little bit with the silhouette of the sun or the darkness of
the ocean below you. So it's one way to maybe hide from other
animals in the ocean if you're gray.
Maisie: You've mentioned harbor seals a couple of times, and
Maisie has a question about those seals in particular.
I'm five years old. And I live in Sacramento, California and I
want to know why harbor seals have to live in the snow?
Jane: Why do harbor seals live in the snow?
Unknown: So harbor seals you can find in a lot of different parts
of the world. So some of them live up in the Arctic area where
it is snowing. Others actually live in California. So here at
the hospital right now, we've got five baby harbor seals that
we're taking care of. So I always like to think about with
the harbor seals the same way with people. Sometimes some just
like different climates. So some people like living in Maine and
Vermont, where it's really, really cold. I'm not that
person. I like to be out in California, where it's a little
bit warmer. So you've got different populations. They
don't necessarily swim that big distance. They have kind of
their home area they like spending time in, but they're
built for it. The ones that live in the cold where the snow,
they're a little bit bigger, a little bit fattier, and they've
got that blubber to keep them warm, compared to some of the
ones that are in California, where it's a little bit warmer.
Jane: Tell us a little bit more about blubber, because not only
is blubber an amazingly fun word to say, it's also really
important to these marine animals, especially ones that
live in cold water.
Adam Ratner: Exactly, blubber is fat. It's a very fun word for
fat and seals and sea lions and whales and dolphins are very
fat, so it's what's going to help them stay warm in this
really, really cold water, because they're mammals just
like us. If you stand a seal or a sea lion up against you, they
have all the same bones. They have all the same organs in all
the same places. So blubber is what we call an adaptation. It's
going to allow them to live in this different environment than
what people live in.
Jane: How many different kinds of seals are there?
Unknown: There are so many different types of seals. I
think there are over 30 different types of seals and sea
lions, so pinnipeds, these flipper -footed animals.
Jane: That's another amazing word, and I'm really glad you
said it Adam, because I want to know more about what a pinniped
is. I love saying that word.
Adam Ratner: Yeah, so if you break the word down, so the end
part, ped, you might think of that in other words that we use
every single day. So pedal or pedestrian or pedometer, it
means foot. Pinna means flipper or feather. So these are
flipper-footed mammals. So it's seals sea lions, and then the
walrus also fits into that group. They're kind of like the
one man out one of these things doesn't look like the others is
the walrus within the pinnipeds.
Jane: Walruses have flippers, just like seals and sea lions,
but they look pretty different from the other two pinnipeds.
For starters, walruses have two big tusks and a mustache, and
there are no walruses at the Marine Mammal Center. That's
because walruses live up in the Arctic. We're going to get to
walruses next week in our bonus episode, but coming up, we're
going to learn about sea lions, and we'll take a side trip to a
very special place famous as a hangout for them. Stay tuned.
This is But Why: a Podcast for Curious Kids? I'm Jane Lindholm,
today we're learning about pinnipeds, flipper-footed marine
mammals. Those are sea lions at a place called Pier 39 part of
the Fisherman's Wharf area in San Francisco, California. Lots
of sea lions come and hang out on the boat docks at Pier 39
they play with each other, but mostly they just seem to nap.
Tourists go to visit them because it's so fun to be able
to see these huge animals up close. Producer Sarah went to
Pier 39 but instead of interviewing the sea lions, she
talked with some of the kids who were watching them. And sure
enough, those kids had lots of questions.
My name is Um I'm 10 years old. I'm visiting from Fresno,
California in from the Central Valley. Why are there so many
sea lions in Pier 39?
I asked our guest for this episode, Adam Ratner, a marine
biologist at the Marine Mammal Center, why there are so many
sea lions at Pier 39.
Adam Ratner: Basically, over 30 years ago, some sea lions found
these open docks that no one was using. They had just been doing
construction on them, and the boats hadn't come back, and they
realized that this was an awesome place to come and just
rest and hang out. So in the very first year, in 1989 there
were a handful of sea lions that showed up. No one really did
anything. They just let them be there, and they told all their
friends. And then pretty soon, hundreds ofsSea lions started
showing up there, and now, depending on the time of year,
you might show up to Pier 39 and we saw over 1,500 California sea
lions at Pier 39 last year on one day. So it's this huge
hangout spot, basically, for sea lions. And the reason why we
think they like Pier 39 the best is because it's a safe place.
It's away from any predators. People have kind of given them
these docks so they don't have to worry about people, kind of
interrupting them and bothering them. And the same reason why
people are there, there's a lot of good fish and food in the
bay, so you've got this kind of resting spot. I think about it
as almost like as a gas station or a rest up on the highway when
you're on a big road trip up and down the California coast.
That's what the sea lions are doing. And this is a place to
kind of rest, grab a little bit of food, relax for a few days
before you head either down to Southern California to hang out
with all the females, or up to kind of the Northern California,
Vancouver, British Columbia area, where maybe you're going
to your favorite restaurant for food.
Jane: And they don't mind that so many people like to watch
them.
Unknown: They don't. They seem to kind of ignore us. What's
really great is there is a separation, so you're not able
to touch them. It's against the law of feed them or throw
anything towards them. So we can be close enough that we can see
them really well. But they do have their space, which is
really important, and we've seen if people do get close, we
actually scare them away. So it's a sign that if we can view
wildlife responsibly and safely, always keep our distance, use
your zoom on your camera rather than get too close, be really
quiet around them. We have this really amazing opportunity to
see wildlife up close and enjoy what's in our own backyard.
Jane: Even if you don't live anywhere near San Francisco, you
can watch a live video stream of the sea lions at the pier. The
website is pier 39.com/sealions. We'll put that in our show notes
too. But if you're looking at a big four flippered animals
swimming through the water, and you're not on that live stream.
How do you know if it's a seal or a sea lion?
Kiara: My name is Kiara. I am from Dublin, California, and I'm
nine years old. What is the difference between sea lions and
seals?
Adam Ratner: So sea lions, in my mind, are like lions. So lions
Olivia: My name is Olivia. I mean, eight. Why do sea lions
have ear flaps, just like we have that you can see. Lions
have these big front paws that they can walk around on, and
lions are brown. Sea lions are like lions. They have all those
same features. Seals, if you want a way to remember them, are
kind of more like sausages. So sausages don't have any ears
that you can see. Seals will just have little tiny holes in
their head. They don't have these big flippers. They kind of
scoot around on their bellies like big caterpillars or worms.
And then seals are either going to be kind of this one grayish
or brown color, or they could be spotted, kind of like how
sausages usually look. So I always remember sea lions are
like lions. Seals are like sausages.
swim?
Jane: Do all pinnipeds swim?
Adam Ratner: Yes, so all pinnipeds swim, and they're
built different ways to swim. So sea lions have these really big
front flippers. They can use them, kind of like our arms. And
they're really, really fast swimmers. So they can swim 25
miles an hour, which is five times faster than the fastest
human swimmer. So they're really, really quick and agile.
And they can also come up onto land. They jump up onto docks,
like at Pier 39. Seals are also really good swimmers, but
they're gonna use their back flippers instead, and those
tiny, short, front flippers are kind of like the steering wheel.
It's gonna help them kind of just make little turns more than
anything else.
Tej: My name is Tej, T- E- J. [sea lion noises] Why do they
need to eat fish?
Jane: That really sounded just like the sea lions and Maggie
from San Francisco has the same question.
Maggie: Why does sea lions eat fish?
Adam Ratner: So fish is delicious. Fish is super healthy
for them. It gives them all the nutrients they need. Obviously,
there's a fair amount of fish out there for these animals to
eat. Seals and sea lions are top predators, so they eat a lot of
different things. Here at the hospital, we feed them herring,
which is a relatively small fish, but out in the wild, a sea
lion or an elephant seal could eat something like stingray, it
could eat actually small sharks, octopus. So these animals do eat
a lot of different types of things, but fish is just gonna
be one of the things that's maybe a little bit easier to
catch and gives you all those yummy nutrients that you need to
grow big and strong.
Avery: My name is Avery. I'm nine years old, and I'm from
Indiana, and my question is, how do we tell the females from the
males?
Adam Ratner: Sea lions, there are two different types that we
find in the United States, so the stellar sea lion and the
California sea lion. And stellar sea lions are really why sea
lions were called lions. So stellar sea lions are found up
in Alaska and Washington state, and they are huge. The boys get
up to be over 2,000 pounds, and they actually do develop this
thick mane around their neck, and it's only the boys that get
that. And the females, the girls, they don't get that. It's
a difference between the boys and the girls, and it allows the
boys to show that they are a full grown adult kind of, hey,
look at me. Look how big I am. Look at my beautiful mane. And
it's a way for them to get maybe girlfriends out on those
beaches. With the California sea lions, It's a little bit
different. The boys are still much bigger. So boys get to
around 750 pounds. The girls only around 250 so the boys are
three times the size.
Jane: Yeah, that's a big difference.
Adam Ratner: Yeah, and they don't get a mane. But the male
sea lions, when they turn around five years old, they actually
develop a bump on the top of their head. It's what we call a
sagittal crest, and what it kind of looks like is a big mohawk as
they get older. And it's the same way. It's the way for the
male sea lions to show off to all the females, saying, Hey,
look at my big mohawk. I'm the biggest, strongest male out
here.
Braden: I'm Braden. I'm 12 years old, and I'm from Plainfield,
Indiana. Why do sea lions fight each other?
Adam Ratner: They put on a good show at Pier 39 certainly. So
all those sea lions at Pier 39 again, you might have 50 of them
there at one time, or you could have over 1,000 of them at one
time, and almost all of them are actually males. And it's because
the sea lions migrate. They go from Southern California all the
way up to around Washington state. But the females stay
closer to Southern California, and it's the males that go up
and down the California coast the most. So all those males at
Pier 39 are hanging out. They're resting either on their way up
to their favorite restaurant or on their way down to the
breeding grounds, where all the females are. So one of the
things that we tend to see is all these males are actually
practicing their fighting because when they go down to
Southern California, they kind of have to fight with each other
to get the girlfriends. This is a place for them to do that. It
could also be that they just have their favorite spot on the
dock and they don't want to be bothered, so they're going to
fight for that really sunny spot away from some of the other
animals. But it's never really to hurt the animals. It's to
show that they're the biggest, they're the strongest, and
that's going to help them when it comes time to be around the
girlfriends.
Jane: As humans, we have more in common with seals and sea lions
than you might think. We mentioned that they're mammals,
and so are we. Mammals give live birth to their babies and feed
them milk. That's what seals and sea lions do. They don't lay
eggs.
Adam Ratner: So what we're going to see with seals and sea lions
when it's time to have their babies. For the sea lions,
they're going to go all down to Southern California, and they're
going to go to these big beaches down at the Channel Islands, and
they're going to have, typically, one baby at a time.
We almost never see twins, and we don't really see siblings the
same year type of thing. So one baby at a time, the sea lions,
they spend six to nine months with their mom, and they're
gonna learn to swim with their mom, and they're gonna go find
food with their mom, and then at around nine months old, they're
out on their own, and that's when they might start swimming
up and down the California coast. With the elephant seals,
we talked about this one a little bit earlier, born in the
winter time, and the baby only spends one month with mom, and
they just get really, really fat. They drink all their mom's
milk, and then they have to learn everything else on their
own. So it is different than people, but it's always a live
birth with a baby, and the mom will spend a little bit of time
with them, getting them ready for life on their own. It's so
fascinating as well to think you look at these animals that look
so different, like a sea lion, like a walrus, like an elephant
seal, but you realize how much like humans they are. They're
all mammals. So we all breathe the same air, we eat the same
food. We swim in the same areas, but they're, they're different
at the same time.
Jane: And the really cool thing is, by studying seals and sea
lions, researchers not only learn new things about these
animals, but they can also learn important things about our
oceans and even human health.
Adam Ratner: Oh so much so seals and sea lions because they're
they're like people, they're mammals. We call them sentinels
of the sea, or ecosystem indicators. So they tell us
about the health of the ocean. They eat the same food that we
do, they swim in the same water that we do. They breathe the
same air that we do. So here at the hospital, the issues we see
seals and sea lions coming in with give us signs of, what are
the impacts of climate change, or what are the impacts of
toxins and poisons that are in the water? What's happening to
the fish right off our coast is the fish healthy? Is the fish
plentiful? So so many things where we can get these animals
better at the hospital, but it actually helps us do better
human medicine. We use the same treatments that you might get at
a human hospital, and we've actually discovered new
treatments here at the hospital on animals that people might get
at the hospital if they get sick.
Jane: So how are sea lions doing generally? What are we seeing in
their populations? So
Adam Ratner: Luckily, California sea lions and elephant seals,
their populations have been growing. They're really success
stories. These animals used to be hunted and the numbers were
really low, but with protections for the past 50 years the Marine
Mammal Protection Act, we've seen them really thrive. So sea
lion, California sea lions and elephant seals, they're not
endangered or threatened, and they're a sign that we can help
save these animals if we take the right action. Elephant Seals
are one of my favorite animals in the whole world, and it's
because of their story. They were hunted to less than 100
animals. We actually thought that they had gone extinct back
in the 1800s and they found a small group of them hidden on an
island in Mexico, and realized that we had this chance to kind
of bring an animal back from the brink of extinction. So they
protected the island. We put in place different rules, and the
elephant seals now went from 100 animals to around 175,000 so
we've got this ability to help save species. Same thing with
the sea lions. So those animals are sentinels for the sea
because we're seeing them so frequently as well, they give us
lots of clues. There are other types of seals and sea lions
that aren't so lucky. They are on the endangered species list.
One that we work with at the Marine Mammal Center is the
Hawaiian monk seal, as the name says, they're only found out in
Hawaii. They're the only seal or sea lion that you'll find in
warm water, so they like figured it out, but their numbers are
only around 1,600 and that number has been growing with
protection over the last few years, but every single one of
those is really important, and that's why the Marine Mammal
Center has a hospital out in Hawaii. We work with a lot of
different groups to help give them the second chance, and it's
a sign that conservation and rehabilitation can make a really
big difference.
Jane: Thanks to Adam Ratner and the Marine Mammal Center for
helping us learn about seals and sea lions. That's it for this
episode, but we have a bonus episode coming up all about
walruses. Remember walruses, those funky cousins of seals and
sea lions with their big tusks and mustaches? We'll learn all
about them in a bonus episode in one week. Now, if you have a
question about anything, have an adult record you asking it. It's
easy to do on a smartphone using an app like voice memos, then
have your adult email your question file to
questions@butwhykids.org our show is produced by Melody
Bodette, Sarah Baik and me, Jane Lindholm at Vermont Public, and
were distributed by PRX. Our video producer is Joey Palumbo.
Check out our YouTube series, But Why? Bites! We put out a
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