We report on the distribution and abundance of the northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris)

California sea lions increased from approximately 50 000 to 340 000 animals in the last 40 years, and their pups are starving and stranding on beaches in southern California, raising questions about the adequacy of their food supply. We investigated whether the declining sea lion pup weight at San Miguel rookery was associated with changes in abundance and quality of sardine, anchovy, rockfish and market squid forage. In the last decade off central California, where breeding female sea lions from San Miguel rookery feed, sardine and anchovy greatly decreased in biomass, whereas market squid and rockfish abundance increased. Pup weights fell as forage food quality declined associated with changes in the relative abundances of forage species. A model explained 67% of the variance in pup weights using forage from central and southern California and 81% of the variance in pup weights using forage from the female sea lion foraging range. A shift from high to poor quality forage for breeding females results in food limitation of the pups, ultimately flooding animal rescue centres with starving sea lion pups. Our study is unusual in using a long-term, fishery-independent dataset to directly address an important consequence of forage decline on the productivity of a large marine predator. Whether forage declines are environmentally driven, are due to a combination of environmental drivers and fishing removals, or are due to density-dependent interactions between forage and sea lions is uncertain. However, declining forage abundance and quality was coherent over a large area (32.5–38° N) for a decade, suggesting that trends in forage are environmentally driven.

Stomach lavaging was used to study the feeding habits of northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) found on San Miguel Island, California, during the spring of 1984. Fifty‐nine elephant seals were chemically immobilized with an intramuscular injection of ketamine hydrochloride. Once immobilized, an animal's stomach was intubated, filled with 3–4 liters of water to create a slurry of the undigested food items, and evacuated into a collection device. The stomachs of 57 (96.6%) of the animals lavaged contained identifiable parts of prey. Twenty‐nine different food items were identified, 12 of which have not been previously reported as prey of the northern elephant seal: two teleost fish, Coryphaenoides acrolepis (Pacific rattail) and another unidentified macrourid; two crustaceans, Pasiphaea pacifica (glass shrimp) and Euphausia sp.; six squid, Abraliopsis felis, Gonatus berryi, Histioteuthis dofleini, Cranchia scabra, Taonius pavo, and Galiteuthis sp. and two octopi, Octopus dofleini and Octopus rubescens.