My Deep-sea Fishery

"It's like the name, its nose really looks like an elephant." Fang Youqun exclaimed.

It was also the first time Xiang Yang saw 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 secondary protected animal, there is no such seal in the Maritime University.

Seeing Xiang Yang did not speak, Xia Pengjie took the initiative to explain to Fang Youqun: "Yes, elephant seals are indeed named after their noses. They are the largest seals in the world, although they live in the ocean. The area is covered extensively, but they only breed in seven main habitats, four of which are islands off California."

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

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

Xiang Yang nodded, expressing it clearly.

In fact, Xiang Yang also knew a lot about the creatures such as seals.

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

Elephant seals usually take up to one month to peel off, during which most of their fur and skin will be removed.

During the molting period, when elephant seals have the weakest ability to keep out the cold, they will keep their body temperature on the beach until new fur has grown.

In addition, the elephant seals that humans see warmly patted motionless on the beach, and the extremely mild phenomenon is just an illusion of elephant seals.

Real elephant seals are actually extremely fierce, and males will fight to determine the identity of their lord.

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

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

The vast majority of elephant seals are active during the day and forage in the pelagic areas and can stay in the water for a long time.

Like sea lions, elephant seals are also master divers. Most elephant seals can dive to the depths of 300 to 800 meters, with the deepest dive of up to 1,500 meters.

Throughout Antarctica, elephant seals are one of the few marine predators that do not feed on krill.

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

Because elephant seals rarely forage in places less than 200 meters deep.

In addition, the diving time is considered to be long, the average male is about 20 minutes, and the female is shorter, and you must rest for about 3 minutes between each dive.

Of course, nothing is absolute. The record for the deepest diving of an elephant seal is held by a female elephant seal, which took 119 minutes to dive to 1,603 meters.

In addition, elephant seals have a very strange habit.

When on land, elephant seals are generally in groups, ranging from dozens to thousands of them.

But elephant seals do not prey on social creatures.

Evaluating whether a creature is a social animal is mainly to see whether they will cooperate when preying and defending against enemies.

But elephant seals walk alone when searching for food and defending against enemies in the water.

When an elephant seal catches a huge Antarctic ice fish on the bottom of the sea, they will drag the ice fish back to the shore to enjoy it alone. Even if the rest of the food is discarded in place or thrown back into the sea, they will not be left to their companions.

When an elephant seal is hunted by great white sharks and killer whales, other elephant seals will never help.

From the end of spring to the beginning of winter, the northern elephant seal will store a large amount of food as fat and spend the winter on the ground.

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

"How do you say?" Xiang Yang asked in confusion.

"When I was young, there were still many such seals, and now such seals are rare." Gao Chuang sighed.

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

According to Xiang Yang's knowledge, there were a lot of elephant seals in the ocean before humans came into contact with the ocean.

However, elephant seals have a large body, produce a lot of oil, and have smooth fur. They are loved by large and small Guizhou provinces in Europe, so they have been killed.

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

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

By the 1860s, only 100 elephant seals remained, and they were on the verge of extinction.

However, since the order of the world's many countries issued an absolute ban on the capture of elephant seals in 1922, the number of elephant seals has skyrocketed again.

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

By 1957, Mexico and the United States had jointly established a safety zone for elephant seals covering an area of ​​about 4 square kilometers. Now there are more than 20,000 elephant seals.

From Gao Chuang's young meeting to the present, the number of elephant seals should have been increasing day by day. How could they have been seen frequently 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 strong protection of the United States, the number of elephant seals rose to more than 100,000.

But after entering the 21st century, elephant seals have experienced a population bottleneck.

Wild elephant seals are very susceptible to diseases and pollution. They are affected by the environment. Although no one kills elephant seals anymore, the number of elephant seals is still declining.

While Xiang Yang was thinking about this, the elephant seal in the sea suddenly rushed out of the water, and his plump body stood on the surface of the water. His two forelimbs slapped the surface of the water vigorously, setting off a huge wave on the ship's side.

"I'm going. UU reading www.uukanshu.com"

The crew hurried back to hide.

This is not usual. If you get wet, you get wet. In this **** weather, if your clothes get wet by this elephant seal, they won't dry out in a week.

However, the action of the elephant seal did not stop. After slapped the sea surface twice with the front fin, its body plunged into the sea water, and then quickly surfaced, with the help of the surface of the sea. In that huge impact, he jumped out of the sea in an instant.

Don't look at this elephant seal being very fat, but after rushing out of the sea, it looks like a brave flying swallow. Its body is extremely flexible and vigorous, jumping out of the water for more than two meters.

Then it fell back to the surface of the water like a diver, stood up again, half of its body surfaced, and looked at the people on the boat with a simple expression.

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

Xiang Yang nodded, "It's very possible."