southern elephant seals<\/a>. \u00a0We were fortunate to have Hector Casin with us. \u00a0Hector has spent years working with and observing all of the wildlife of Peninsula Valdes and he noticed one female elephant seal who was exhibiting signs (that we could not see) that she was about to give birth. Hector let us know and sure enough within a few minutes she had borne her pup. \u00a0Shown first below is an image of the pup emerging tail first, with its head still wrapped in placenta and its fore flippers still folded tightly against its body as it was in the womb. \u00a0Next is an image of the pup literally taking its first breath having pulled its head out of the placenta to free its mouth and nostrils to breathe just a moment before. \u00a0It did so without any assistance from its mother. \u00a0I have seen elephant seal births a number of times in Central California, and as it was with this southern elephant seal it is special to witness each time. \u00a0Cheers, and thanks for looking![\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” 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type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]While in Argentina recently to photograph southern right whales, we had a stretch of unfavorable weather with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10674,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[376,160],"tags":[378,236],"class_list":{"0":"post-10670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-argentina","8":"category-elephant-seal","9":"tag-argentina","10":"tag-elephant-seals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanlight.com\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanlight.com\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanlight.com\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanlight.com\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanlight.com\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanlight.com\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanlight.com\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanlight.com\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanlight.com\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oceanlight.com\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}