‘Inhospitable’ Island Hosts a Multitude of Endangered Wildlife

The sun is setting over Mirounga Bay when a trumpeting from the shore disrupts the serenity of Southeast Farallon Island.

Baby elephant seals dodge three bulls whose ferocious love calls signal the start of a bloody battle for sexual dominance of the island. The breeding season has begun.

Lehi and Dome, as they were named by biologists, are the first to fight. Dome wins and moves on to tackle another competitor, Tuco, who is also sent packing.

In Control of Harem

That leaves Dome in control of a small harem of females, at least for the night.

Despite an inhospitable appearance, for more than a million years the island has played host to a multitude of rare and endangered life forms. It has survived everything from Russian fur seal traders and Gold Rush “egg wars” to the dumping of radioactive waste and a massive oil spill.

The Farallones include one main island three-quarters of a mile long 27 miles west of San Francisco and two smaller islands. Only the Southeast Farallon is accessible to humans.

Researchers say the granite outcroppings play an unmatched role in the study of marine mammals and birds and warn that the future of the wildlife may be jeopardized by controversial coastal oil exploration leases that are under review by the Interior Department.

“The Farallones are sitting there in a very productive part of the ocean, and sea birds and marine mammals are very reluctant to haul out, or rest or breed on the mainland,” said David Ainley, marine research director for the Point Reyes Bird Observatory. “Society has to chose, has to decide, whether it wants to protect these precious species.”

The observatory operates a research station on Southeast Farallon, which has been declared a marine sanctuary by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The islands are “carpeted by birds and mammals,” Ainley said.

Although there is no evidence that oil drilling will affect the sea lions and seals crowding the islands, Ainley said biologists worry about oil spills.

“The problem is oil on the water, which does affect sea birds and a few marine mammals like otters and fur seals,” he said. “So you have to weigh the potential danger of having chronic oil pollution.”

‘No. 1 Bird-Watching Spot’

Several of the islands’ seasonal inhabitants have battled back from the edge of extinction, including the now-abundant elephant seals that once had been considered wiped out. The first elephant seal born on the island in almost 150 years was reported by the then-new observatory station in 1972. Biologist Peter Pyle said the creatures now are seen all along the West Coast.

During the last 14 years, the outpost has become a prime location for bird-watching. About 365 species have been spotted. The Farallones are a regular stopover for migrating sea birds and “vagrant” birds lost or blown off course.

“It’s just the No. 1 bird-watching spot in the country,” Pyle said, pulling a tiny indigo bunting from a bird-catching net one morning, long past the time when it should have arrived in the tropics for the winter.

“That’s what the island is really known for--weird birds showing up at weird times, and this is definitely one of them,” he said.

In the spring, the entire island is blanketed by nesting gulls and common murres, Pyle said. To protect wildlife, no more than eight people are allowed on the island at once. With every step, you are likely to spot some form of rare life on a rock, in one of the island’s four trees, or burrowing underground.

“The island is very small . . . and it becomes even smaller when there is a full population,” Ainley said. “If you move around too much, you cause a lot of disturbance.”

Biologists and volunteers are assigned to the island from the observatory year-round. They rise with the sun and track the hundreds and sometimes thousands of birds and mammals, trying to determine migration patterns and the effects of pollution and weather.

Challenges Presented

The Farallones have a way of constantly presenting new challenges for observers and wildlife inhabitants.

A New Zealand researcher recently came there to study a Cassin’s auklet flea. Others have come to observe great white sharks.

Environmentalists were stunned when the Oceanic Society reported a few years ago that the military dumped more than 60 million gallons of radioactive wastes near the island between 1946 and 1970.

A major observatory project was the retrieval and study of hundreds of slippery birds hurt after the tanker Puerto Rican exploded in 1983 and spilled 1.5 million gallons of oil at sea.

California Indians avoided the island, calling it the “island of the dead.” But business-minded Russian fur traders found it lively and covered with lush-pelted northern fur seals. The seals were slaughtered and only a handful now show up each year, Pyle said.

More successful has been the common murre, a bird whose tasty eggs became so popular during the California Gold Rush that one could cost as much as $1. The price sent raiding crews to devastate the 400,000 murre nests, and within a few years only 6,000 of the birds remained. The population since has rebounded to an estimated 60,000, Pyle said.

The opportunity to study Farallones life is a magnetic attraction for researchers.

“On a clear day you can see the mainland,” Pyle said. “Otherwise you don’t have to think about it.”