PACIFIC GROVE – At the shore near Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, a woman stands behind a chain-link fence, peering through her binoculars to get a clearer view of the beach. To an untrained eye, the mottled shapes amassed on this shore appear indistinguishable from one another.
But Kim Akeman doesn’t simply see a cluster of harbor seals through her binoculars. She sees familiar individuals she can easily name: Pollywog, Filly, Paper Clip, Dottie McScarbelly and Rascalette.
Every day, Akeman spends hours along Pacific Grove’s shoreline documenting the daily lives of harbor seals in meticulous detail. She leads a group of community scientists who observe and record the full spectrum of harbor seal life in Pacific Grove, from young seals clumsily learning to swim to mothers experiencing noise-related stress and giving birth to stillborn pups.
These volunteers work tirelessly to protect one of the region’s most sensitive marine mammals, and have quietly built one of the most comprehensive databases of harbor seal behavior and population trends along California’s central coast.
They call themselves the Seal Team.
The Seal Team
The Seal Team started more than 15 years ago when Akeman, a registered veterinary technician by trade, decided to monitor the local population of harbor seals. What began as intermittent observation has grown into a daily, year-round effort to understand and help these animals. Today, the group includes a dozen locals who monitor harbor seal populations at 14 coastal sites spanning from Breakwater Cove to Pebble Beach. Most members of the team are retired from science-related jobs, though their backgrounds range from heavy equipment operator to zoologist. Fueled by a shared passion for protecting local wildlife, they now volunteer their time to the Seal Team.
Group members check the beaches multiple times a day, regardless of the weather. “I have been there under an umbrella in the pelting rain, watching a birth happening,” says Akeman. The volunteers document seal behaviors and births during visits that range from 15 minutes to several hours. They also note how the seals respond to noise from excited onlookers, loud cars driving by and other disturbances.
The Seal Team’s efforts have helped shape local environmental policy, educated countless visitors passing by and provided data used by scientists at UC Santa Cruz and federal agencies.
“They’re the Jane Goodalls of harbor seals,” says Colleen Reichmuth, research scientist at the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. “It’s a community of people, day in, day out, year after year, that are monitoring, recording, protecting and educating about these animals that are so iconic to the community.”
The team focuses most of its efforts on the coastal area near the Hopkins Marine Station, where a cozy cove offers a secure place for the seals to both rest and give birth. This makes the site an ideal environment. The Seal Team finds that the local seal population consistently returns to this area, says Brandon Southall, a research associate at UC Santa Cruz.
Longtime members of the Seal Team easily recognize the individuals who return to the area time and time again, referring to them by name. The seals typically receive a name based on some distinguishing characteristic, but sometimes the Seal Team will take a suggestion from one of the 15,000 followers of their Facebook page, The Harbor Seals of Pacific Grove.
Among the most recognized names on the page is one of Akeman’s all-time favorites, Dragonfly, a seal introduced to the page with her tongue sticking out in a loveable photo seven years ago. Akeman named her after noticing a dragonfly-shaped mark on her neck, but she’s one of the most easily identifiable — and beloved — seals on the page. In nearly every photo, among a blur of gray and brown spots, is Dragonfly’s bright pink tongue.
Seal survival
In 2022, construction crews began work on an eight-week project located on Fifth Street, which neighbored Dragonfly’s favorite spot for giving birth. Loud noises are a major stressor for the seals. Akeman recalls watching Dragonfly struggle to give birth, swimming out into the water and returning to labor, over and over, as a cacophony of construction noises filled her birthing beach.
“The noise was just horrid, and she finally miscarried there,” says Akeman. “She sort of just declined at that time and eventually died.”
Dragonfly’s death illustrates how seals’ reliance on the cove makes them easier to monitor, but also threatens their survival. When their preferred habitats are disrupted and they face food shortages or stressful noise disturbances, the seals remain even though their survival is at risk. In the year construction was completed by Dragonfly’s birthing beach, the Seal Team documented an alarming 33% loss of pups, more than three times the normal range.
Some of these deaths included miscarriages and pup abandonment. The Seal Team records each of these events, sometimes watching helplessly for days as an abandoned pup withers away. “Multiple days of agony, like any death. I’ve been doing this 22 years, so I’ve become hardened. It doesn’t get any easier to take,” says Thom Akeman, Seal Team member and Kim Akeman’s husband. The team is unable to intervene when noise disruption leads a mother to flee without her baby. Any attempt to rescue the pup could result in other mothers abandoning their pups.
Even the smallest noises cause significant disturbance for the seals, who rely on quiet beaches for much-needed rest. They’re able to build up their energy stores more efficiently on the beach than in the water.
“Out of the water, they blob. They inchworm around, so it’s not very fast, and that’s why they’re skittish,” says Kathy Nolet, another Seal Team member. “If they go in the water, they’re one million percent comfortable.”
But their time on the shore is critical. With each loud noise, whether from cars or construction equipment, the seals wake up and raise their heads. Sometimes, they flee into the safety of the water. Without adequate rest on the shore, they have less energy for important activities such as hunting for food or dodging white sharks.
Scientists’ seal of approval
The team’s affection for the seals is paired with scientific discipline. Their data collection protocols are based on those of similar groups, such as the Cornwall Seal Group, and their findings are shared with scientists. Their records, including observational data entered into spreadsheets and over half a million photos of known harbor seals, are now one of the most detailed long-term datasets on harbor seals anywhere in the United States. The database is available for reference when legislators or community leaders make decisions that could impact the seals.
“The knowledge base that’s there is very worth listening to, whether you’re a scientist or a regulator or a developer. There is a lot of important knowledge held within this group of individuals,” says Reichmuth of the Institute of Marine Sciences.
Their work shows how noise and other disturbances impact seal populations. In 2022, the year Dragonfly died, the team recorded a 33% loss of pups. In 2024, around the time of two other construction projects, there was a recorded 28% loss. In years when no construction occurred, they saw losses within the normal range of 6% to 9%.
“They actually were able to document changes in pup success rates correlated with these disturbances. I think that’s extremely unique, at least for marine mammal studies,” says Reichmuth. “It’s very rare that we can actually relate mortality events to human behavior, and that’s what they were able to do here.”
The ability to observe the changes is related to the team’s work in creating a long-term database that allows patterns to appear over time, much like Farmers’ Almanac, Reichmuth says.
Unfortunately, the pattern is a sobering one. Over the past decade, the local populations monitored by the Seal Team dropped from 700 individuals to between 200 and 300, with construction being a primary threat to the seals’ survival, according to Kim Akeman. “We can control disturbances if we can get cities to understand that in their development, to remember we’re on Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary,” she says. “If this isn’t a place where animals can be protected, then where is?”
Team members work to educate onlookers about the impact of sleep disruption, as even speaking loudly near the seals is enough to wake them. The city also posted signs drawing attention to the sleeping seals, and drone use is restricted in the area to reduce noise further. There are major threats to the seals that can’t be quickly fixed, but Kim Akeman encourages people to consider what can be done. “We can’t change the temperature of the water,” she says. “But we can do something about the disturbances.”
Sense of hope
Although Dragonfly is still missed, another Seal Team favorite, Dottie McScarbelly, is thriving. This mother extraordinaire has successfully birthed and raised 13 pups in a row, giving Seal Team members a sense of hope. Each year, as the birthing seals make their way to the shore to bring their pups into the world, a group of locals and tourists forms around the beach. The Seal Team calls them the “puparazzi” and enjoys educating the eager onlookers about the animals that call the beach home. “You can’t really tie me down to anything from March 31 until about April 10 because I am on Dottie watch,” says Kim Akeman.
The Seal Team is a model for community-led conservation, says Reichmuth. Their detailed logs, photographs, and daily observations form a rare long-term dataset that most scientific studies can’t afford to maintain. “I admire the persistence and the willpower of the individuals in this group,” she says. “It’s just the kind of world that I want to live in. It’s the kind of world that has people in a community that care to this level.”
If all goes well, Dottie will go into labor and make her way to the shore near Hopkins Marine Station, where she’ll give birth for the fourteenth time. Once again, Kim Akeman will stand behind the chain-link fence, peering through her binoculars to get a clearer view of the beach. As a proud member of the Seal Team, she’ll welcome Pacific Grove’s newest harbor seal.
