Intriguing sea monster pops in to say hello

By JOHN WALSBY

Monsters from the deep have always held people spellbound, so the appearance of a sea elephant at the Gisborne boat ramp created almost as big a stir as the much-vaunted millennium celebrations.

Seals and sea lions are rarely seen along beaches north of Wellington, so an individual of the largest species taking up temporary residence on the foreshore of a sizeable town gave thousands a chance to study and enjoy this magnificent marine mammal.

Homer, as he was named by locals, left last week, presumably heading for sub-Antarctic islands' breeding grounds.

While in Gisborne, he was even more accessible than the last sea elephant celebrity, Humphrey, who was a regular along the coasts of the Bay of Plenty and Coromandel Peninsula about a decade ago.

Properly known as the southern elephant seal, it is the largest of the true seals.

For the males the name is apt because they mature into huge creatures more than 5m long and weighing almost four tonnes, and as they grow older each develops a prominent wrinkled proboscis somewhat like a short elephant trunk.

The females are much smaller, less than 3m, and only about a tenth of the weight of a mature male.

Like other seals, sea elephants have long, streamlined bodies that are sinuously graceful in the water.

They can swim surprisingly fast for their huge size, reaching up to 25 km/h in short bursts.

They are not as agile as other true seals, but are like them in having no external ear flaps, very little under-fur and hind flippers that just trail behind when the animal is ashore.

Sea elephants are found right around the southern seas. They spend most of their time at sea, feeding on squid, fish and crustaceans, but breed on land and occasionally, like Homer, haul out on beaches to rest or moult.

They have been recorded from Stewart Island to the Bay of Islands, but most of their breeding rookeries in the New Zealand region are in the sub-Antarctic, mainly the Antipodes and Campbell Islands.

The males start to haul out to breed and moult as early as August, but are not joined by the females until late September. They usually come out on sandy or gravelly beaches, but may rest in mud wallows or among tussock above the high-tide mark.

On land they are rather cumbersome, moving along more like giant bloated caterpillars than mammals, with their flippers almost no help at all.

Shuffling and rolling in these rough places helps them to strip old unwanted skin and hair, and probably also helps to cleanse their bodies of external parasites.

These activities are very important for a large, plump animal with short flippers that would be unable to groom itself any other way.

This may help to explain why Homer crushed cars, rubbish bins and a power transformer as he relieved an itch.