My Deep-sea Fishery

"It really lives up to its name, its nose really looks like an elephant." Fang Youqun exclaimed.

It was also the first time for Xiang Yang to see this kind of seal. Although the southern elephant seal has no hair on its body, it is extremely cold-resistant. Coupled with their status as a second-class protected animal, there is no such seal in the Maritime University.

Seeing that Xiang Yang didn't speak, Xia Pengjie took the initiative to explain to Fang Youqun: "Yes, the elephant seal is indeed named after its nose. They are the largest seals in the world. cover a wide range of places, but they only breed in seven major habitats, four of which are the islands off California."

Xiang Yang looked at Xia Pengjie in surprise, "How do you know this elephant seal so well? Have you seen them before?"

Xia Pengjie blushed, and quickly said: "No, I saw it in a book."

Xiang Yang nodded, expressing his understanding.

In fact, Xiang Yang is quite familiar with creatures like seals.

Elephant seals are actually very hardy, and the reason why humans often see them on the beach is because elephant seals shed their skin every summer.

The shedding time of elephant seals is usually as long as one month, during which most of the fur and skin will be shed.

During moulting, when elephant seals are at their weakest against the cold, they stay warm on the beach until new fur grows.

In addition, the elephant seals that humans see are warm and motionless on the beach, and the extremely gentle phenomenon is just an illusion of elephant seals.

True elephant seals are actually quite ferocious, with males fighting to determine who they are.

Like lions competing for the leader of a lion group, the victor generally does not kill the defeated, but only bruises the defeated.

Elephant seals prey on more than 30 species of fish and cephalopods, including squid, octopus, hagfish, porbeams and tiny sharks.

Most elephant seals are diurnal and forage in pelagic areas, where they can spend long periods of time in the water.

Like sea lions, elephant seals are also good divers. Most elephant seals can dive to a depth of 300 to 800 meters, and the deepest dive can reach 1,500 meters.

In the entire Antarctic, elephant seals are one of the very few marine predators that do not feed on krill.

It's not that elephant seals don't eat Antarctic krill, but that elephant seals can't catch Antarctic krill.

Because elephant seals rarely forage in water depths less than 200 meters.

In addition, the diving time is considered to be long, with an average of about 20 minutes for males, and shorter for females, with a rest of about 3 minutes between each dive.

Of course, nothing is absolute. The record for the deepest dive by an elephant seal is held by a female elephant seal, which took 119 minutes to dive to 1603 meters.

In addition, elephant seals have a very strange habit.

When on land, elephant seals usually gather in groups, ranging from dozens to thousands.

But elephant seals do prey on social creatures.

To evaluate whether a creature is a herd animal is mainly to see whether they will work together when hunting and defending against enemies.

But elephant seals travel alone when foraging and fending off enemies in the water.

When an elephant seal catches a huge Antarctic icefish on the bottom of the sea, they will drag the icefish back to the shore and enjoy it alone.

When an elephant seal encounters great white sharks and killer whales, other elephant seals will never rescue them.

From late spring to early winter, northern elephant seals store large amounts of food as fat and spend the winter on the ground.

Gao Chuang sighed suddenly at this moment, "This is actually a very poor creature."

"How to say?" Xiang Yang asked doubtfully.

"When I was young, there were many seals of this kind, but now there are very few such seals." Gao Chuang sighed.

Xiang Yang frowned, he felt that what Gao Chuang said was wrong.

As far as Xiang Yang knows, before humans came into contact with the ocean, there were a lot of elephant seals in the ocean.

However, due to their large body, high oil production and smooth fur, elephant seals are loved by Guizhou, large and small in Europe, so they were killed.

Especially in the early 18th century, the development of machinery industry promoted the establishment of oil refining industry.

At that time, people hunted and killed elephant seals indiscriminately in order to grab the oil from their bodies.

After the 1760s, there were only 100 elephant seals left, and they were on the verge of extinction.

However, since 1922, when many countries around the world issued an order to absolutely ban the capture of elephant seals, the number of elephant seals has skyrocketed again.

Elephant seals even reappeared in American waters by 1930, when the United States immediately protected them.

By 1957, Mexico and the United States jointly established a safe zone for elephant seals of about 4 square kilometers, and now there are more than 20,000 elephant seals.

From Gao Chuang's youth to the present, the number of elephant seals should have been increasing day by day. How could it be possible to see them often in the past, but now they are very rare.

In fact, what Xiang Yang didn't know was that at the end of the 20th century, under the protection of the United States, the number of elephant seals rose to more than 100,000.

But after entering the 21st century, there has been a population bottleneck for elephant seals.

Wild elephant seals are very vulnerable to disease and pollution. Due to the impact of the environment, although no one kills elephant seals anymore, the number of elephant seals is still declining.

Just as Xiang Yang was thinking about this, the elephant seal in the sea suddenly rushed out of the water, its fat body stood tall on the water surface, and its two forelimbs slapped the water surface vigorously, setting off a huge wave on the side of the ship.

"I go."

The crew hurried back to hide.

It's not normal, it gets wet when it gets wet, and in this damn weather, if the clothes get wet with this elephant seal, I'm afraid they won't be dry in a week.

However, the movement of the elephant seal did not stop. After it slapped the sea surface twice with its front flippers, it plunged into the sea water suddenly, and then quickly surfaced again. In that huge impact, he jumped out of the sea in an instant.

Although this elephant seal is very obese, after rushing out of the sea, it is as light and brave as a flying swallow. Its body is extremely flexible and vigorous, and it has jumped more than two meters out of the water.

Then it fell back to the surface of the water like a diver, stood up again, and half of its body surfaced, looking at everyone on the boat with a naive look.

"Brother Yang, do you think this elephant seal wants to climb onto our boat?" Fang Youqun asked Xiang Yang doubtfully.

Xiang Yang nodded, "Very likely."