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Ano Nuevo State Park in San Mateo County will once again allow the public access to viewing elephant seals on Saturday after about six weeks of restricting access amid an outbreak of avian flu that killed over a dozen seals.
The disease, HPAI H5N1, was detected in late February by field researchers with the University of California, Santa Cruz and University of California, Davis, and public access to the popular viewing spots at the state park was closed.
The avian flu outbreak was the first detection of that strain of the virus in elephant seals on the West Coast. It was discovered on the East Coast in seals in Maine in 2022, which concerned researchers because of a die-off of seals in Argentina in 2023 caused by the same strain.
Roxanne Beltran, a professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz, said birds that tested positive at Ano Nuevo over the winter led researchers to increase their monitoring of the seal colony, which has been ongoing for 60 years.
“Given the catastrophic impacts observed in related species, we were concerned about the possibility of the virus infecting northern elephant seals for the first time, so we ramped up monitoring to detect any early signs of abnormalities,” Beltran said in a statement when the outbreak was first detected.
As of April 2, there were 32 cases confirmed in elephant seals in San Mateo County and four in Santa Cruz County, along with two sea lions in San Mateo County and one in San Luis Obispo County. One otter in San Mateo County also tested positive.
At least 18 animals died from the virus, including at least 16 elephant seals.
Parks officials said Wednesday that the virus had subsided. Visitors will once again be allowed to view the seals from established posts at the park overlooking the beach, where thousands congregate every year as their southern destination from Alaska.
Ziad Bawarshi, a park ranger at Ano Nuevo, said the decision was made to reopen access after no cases were detected for about a two-week period. He said restrictions could again be implemented if cases are found in mammals at the park, but in the meantime, he said visitors will find viewing the elephant seals “business as usual.”
These days, most of the non-breeding adults have gone north to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska for the season. But females remain and are preparing to molt over the next few months, and pups too young to migrate are learning how to operate their little elephant seal bodies.
“There’s a lot of pups learning to swim, interacting, mock fighting,” said Bawarshi. “It’s actually one of my favorite times to come,” he said.
Visitors can take self-guided tours with a free permit obtained at the park from April through November. Guided tours are required during the breeding season from December through March.
Bawarshi said new guidelines added slightly more distance to the space visitors are required to keep from elephant seals, from 25 feet to 30 feet.
The California Department of Public Health recommends staying at least 150 yards away from dead birds or wildlife.
