Not Him Again! Emerson, a Stubborn Elephant Seal, Refuses All Attempts to Lure Him From His Favorite Spot on Vancouver Island

A juvenile, 500-pound elephant seal named Emerson has claimed a beach for his own on Vancouver Island. Authorities have repeatedly relocated the seal to areas free of rubbernecking humans, but Emerson repeatedly returns.

Most recently the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Marine Mammal Rescue Unit stuffed Emerson in a van and spirited him away from his preferred Oak Bay beach to a more secluded spot nearly 100 miles away. In a mere five days, the big guy was back.

"I was pretty floored,” fishery officer Morgan Van Kirk tells the CBC this week. “I got the email on the weekend and said to myself, 'there's absolutely no way it could be him already.”

But it was him, again. This is the fourth time Emerson has resisted relocation. They keep moving him because, as usual, some humans won’t respect his boundaries, endangering Emerson and themselves. He keeps coming back because, as marine scientist Anna Hall puts it, “He's picked a great spot and he's sticking with it.”

Emerson is spending so much time on dry land in order to execute the annual “catastrophic molt,” in which he’ll shed his fur and the top layer of skin. As his body needs energy to replace skin tissue, it’s probably not in his best interest to be taxing his resources further with repeated forced relocations.

“We can't keep playing the game of cat and mouse with him,” Van Kirk says. “And since he's just done this big journey, we don't want to put too much extra pressure on him in case he does want to come back.”

We’ve seen this kind of behavior before, notably with Neil the Seal, who also developed a fondness for a particular locale, in his case southeastern Tasmania. Relocating these big fat creatures is, regrettably, necessary, but so is public education. Humans need to learn just one thing: leave wildlife alone.

Photo credit: Global News