|
Overview:
In this lesson, students will consider the fact that northern elephant seals, like many animals, select very different locations for different activities. Adult seals spend most of their time swimming around the northeastern Pacific and feeding in deep waters, but they come to shore twice a year to breed, give birth, and molt. Since it's much easier to observe and record elephant seals on the beach than in the ocean, students will concentrate on some of these beach activities by viewing photographs and videos of elephant seals. They will draw pictures pretending they have visited one of the rookery beaches.
Connections to the Curriculum:
Geography, life science
Connections to the National Geography Standards:
Standard 9: "The characteristics, distribution, and migration of human populations on Earth's surface"
Time:
One to two hours
Materials Required:
- Computer with Internet access
- Blank Xpeditions outline map of North America, one for each student or pair of students
- Writing and drawing materials
Objectives:
Students will
- map the migration route of a male northern elephant seal and analyze that map;
- view pictures and videos of elephant seals in their rookeries and write words describing what they see; and
- draw pictures and write captions about elephant seal activities in rookeries.
Geographic Skills:
Acquiring Geographic Information
Organizing Geographic Information
Answering Geographic Questions
Analyzing Geographic Information
S u g g e s t e d P r o c e d u r e
Opening:
Write the words "Home," "School," "Office buildings," "Parks," and "Mountains" or "Ocean" on the board. Ask students to list activities that people do at each of these places, and write their responses under each word on the board.
Ask the class to look at its lists. Students will agree that people go to different places to do different activities—they don't generally sleep at school (except perhaps at kindergarten nap time), and they don't usually play on swingsets in office buildings.
Explain that many animals have special places where they go for different activities, too. Can students think of examples from the animals in their own lives? Perhaps their cats like to sleep in certain sunny spots near the window or to hide under the bed. Have students share some examples.
Development:
Explain that some animals must travel long distances and go to very different locations to do their different activities. One animal like this is the elephant seal. Have students look at this picture of elephant seals. Can they tell why they are called elephant seals?
Give each student or pair of students a blank outline map of North America.
Tell students that the northern elephant seal lives in the Pacific Ocean along the west coast of North America. Have students circle the words "Pacific Ocean" to identify the Pacific.
Have students look at this migration map. Explain that this map shows the places an adult male elephant seal (a bull) might go over several months. Help students locate this route on their own maps, and ask them to draw it to the best of their ability. Good points of reference will be the Gulf of Alaska, the Canada/United States border, and southern California.
Tell students that male elephant seals often go up to Alaska, as they have seen on the map. Females often travel farther west, sometimes all the way to Hawaii. Help them locate and label Hawaii on their maps. Explain that elephant seals generally make this trip two times per year. They swim farther than any other mammal—over 6,000 miles (about 9,600 kilometers) each year!
Ask students to look carefully at the maps they have drawn. What do they notice about the elephant seal's life? They should notice that it does not stay in one place but instead covers a huge distance. They might also infer that it spends most of its time in the water rather than on land.
Tell the class that elephant seals come onto the beach two times each year—to give birth and mate, and to molt, or shed their skin and hair. The rest of the time, they are feeding in the deep ocean waters. Explain that most elephant seals will return to the beaches where they were born to mate and give birth to their own babies. If students travel to certain beaches in California, they can see elephant seals doing these things.
Help students locate the California coast on their maps. Depending on their ability level and map skills, have them either roughly or more accurately shade the elephant seal's breeding range, which extends slightly to the north of San Francisco Bay and to the south about halfway into Baja California, Mexico. Explain that the beaches along this coast are where the elephant seals come out of the water to mate, give birth, and molt.
Have students look at the following pictures and videos of elephant seals in their breeding grounds (rookeries) in California. As they view the images, ask them to write words describing what the seals appear to be doing.
Students will now have lists of words describing some of the main activities elephant seals do on the beaches of California. Discuss students' lists as a class. What words did they tend to use? They probably mentioned sleeping, fighting, and giving birth.
Explain that male elephant seals (bulls) fight each other to see which one will get to mate with the females. The winner gets to mate, and the loser has to leave.
Ask students if any of the pictures they looked at showed the seals eating. They should say no. Explain that this is because the seals do not eat while they are on the beach and therefore go for up to three months without eating. Eating is saved for later, when they are swimming in the deep ocean.
Closing:
Review the activities that elephant seals do when they are at rookeries on the beach.
Ask students to imagine that they can visit one of these beaches to see the elephant seals, and ask them what they would expect to observe.
Suggested Student Assessment:
Tell the class that there are certain beaches in California where people can go to watch the elephant seals. People are not allowed to get too close to the seals, but they may watch the seals from the rocks and cliffs above the beaches. People who care about the seals sometimes build fences to make sure visitors don't climb down to the beach.
Ask students to imagine that they are visiting one of the rookeries on the California coast. They will observe elephant seals during the month of January, when the pictures and videos they have seen might have been taken.
Have students draw pictures of the activities they might observe on the beach and write captions to accompany their pictures.
Extending the Lesson:
Share these amazing elephant seal facts with the class:
The elephant seal:
- is the largest pinniped (seal) in the world; it weighs over 2 1/2 tons (an elephant weighs up to six tons);
- can stay underwater longer than any other mammal (up to two hours);
- travels the farthest of any mammal each year (up to 13,000 miles, or approximately 21,000 kilometers); and
- dives extremely deep into the ocean—over 5,000 feet (1,500 meters).
Have students draw pictures illustrating these facts.
Related Links:
| 
Check out:
