It has been very foggy yesterday so missed seeing the elephant seal pup. I was surprised to see this morning the size he has attained. At 13 days old, gaining  4.5 kg or 10 lbs per day , the pup would have gained  58.5kg or 130 lbs since birth.

At birth pups weigh 75 pounds (35 kg) or more and are about four feet (1.25 m) in length.  This figure comes from research done in California. No one has yet done research for recording  the growth rates for elephant seal pups at Race Rocks Ecological Reserve.

The pups nurse for about 28 days, generally gaining about 10 lbs (4.5 kg) a day.

Every morning they are in a different location because the pursues the female the previous night.

I took the following pictures from the Remote Camera 1:

Note the dark patches on Berthas breast are the locations on nipples.

Both mother and pup still sleeping.

A good source of scientific data on Elephant seal growth rates and survivorship  can be found in a 1994 publication : Le Boeuf, Burney J., and Richard M. Laws, editors Elephant Seals: Population Ecology, Behavior, and Physiology. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1994 1994. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft7b69p131/