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Judy Salamacha

Training with the Friends of the Elephant Seals

Tolosa FES Elephant SealsThen & Now
By Judy Salamacha

Would you like to meet people from all over the world without traveling far from home? Is teaching something amazing to children and adults on your bucket list?
Are there ocean mysteries you’d like to discover without leaving the shore? Does it make you happy to make others happier?
If you are intrigued by these questions, you should meet Polly Tatton, chairperson of the training team for Friends of the Elephant Seals (FES). An interview with her is the first step to becoming a docent and volunteer guide.
Most likely, as she enlightens you about the extraordinary life cycle of the elephant seals, she will excite you to join the Friends’ team of more than 100 interpreters who volunteer 3 hours a day four days a month to educate visitors about the elephant seals at the northern rookery at Piedras Blancas.
Tolosa FES Protect the Elephant SealsAccording to the group’s website (www.elephantseal.org), the marine mammal, Mirounga angustirostris, commonly known as the northern elephant seal, spends 8-10 months a year in the open ocean, diving 1,000 to 5,800 feet deep for periods of 15 minutes to 2 hours and migrates thousands of miles twice a year to its land based rookery for birthing, breeding, molting and rest.
In 1990 they started showing up at the Piedras Blancas beach south of the lighthouse, 7 miles north of San Simeon.
The Friends group was formed in 1997 after California State Parks and the Hearst Corporation rerouted Hwy 1 to construct a parking lot with safe viewing areas. In 2003, the Friends received a grant to develop the boardwalk and bluff trails that provide accessible, public viewing without harassment of the seals and their habitat.
It is critical to provide these 23,000 mammals safe space to keep them coming back to their California Central Coast home-base, which saw 5,300 seal pups born the winter months of 2014.
Since viewing is every day of the year without admission fees or reservations required, tourist-friendly guides need to be on duty. Volunteer guides come from diverse careers. They are weather-hearty professionals trained to become professional interpreters. They give out brochures, answer quick questions, sell souvenirs, and lead small, tour groups around the rookery.
The groups might be a family or visitors from Sweden, Africa, Russia, Arroyo Grande or an area school group. Over 1,900 children learned about the elephant seals in 2014-15.
A retired nurse, Tatton has been a guide for 7 years and loves every day she is on the bluff. Before scheduling an interview appointment with her at: , she recommends checking the website and visiting the site just north of Hearst Castle.
“Go out to the bluffs to see what the guides do,” she said, “spend time listening to their information, and get a feel for the site and how the guides spend their time.” Interviews must be scheduled by August 31 and attendance is required for all four days of the 2015 training, Sept. 12, and Oct. 10, 17 and 24.
“I had to learn a lot, but you don’t have to know it all at once,” said Tatton. Training sessions cover discussions on State Parks, cetaceans, elephant seals, pinnipeds, kelp, sea otters, sharks, and birds of Piedras Blancas, including a tour of the lighthouse.”  Training is done by guides volunteering in the program.
A speaker is brought in three times a year for continuing education and once a year a dinner is held to honor the volunteers and celebrate the good work they’ve done all year.
FES no long spends time developing fundraisers. Memberships, souvenir sales, and generous donations stuffed into the onsite tubes fulfill their needs, so guides can focus on their core mission to educate and protect the elephant seals and their marine habitat.
Tatton says she typically talks to 100 guests a day. In 2014, approximately 750,000 visitors were confirmed by counters used by the guides. Recently, Tatton met up with people from Colorado, Alabama, Visalia, and San Bernadino. Her most intriguing visitors were “a small tour group of eight Russian Cossacks dressed traditionally with an interpreter. I had to have my picture taken with them.”
Her most common question is “Are they dead?” She’ll answer, “No, they are resting because for the next 5 months they’ll be eating and swimming to the Aleutian Islands.”
Regarding questions on the size of an elephant seal, Tatton tells them the largest of the seals are bigger than the car they arrived in.

Freelance writer and author, Judy Salamacha’s, Then & Now column is special to Tolosa Press. Reach her at: or call (805) 801-1422.

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