Sea Lion Nursing Behavior: Pups, Mothers, and Colony Life at Channel Islands Harbor
Documenting the places where people and wildlife meet.
Channel Islands Harbor, Oxnard, California • April 2nd, 2026
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Equipment
To Admire from Afar requires a diverse set of tools. We utilize a specialized range of equipment tailored to the nuances of each environment, selecting each piece for its ability to capture the field with precision while maintaining a low-profile presence.
Browse the full kit on our Amazon storefront. It's new and I'm adding to it as I go. This is an affiliate storefront, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
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Primary Systems:
Sony a1 II
Sony α6700
iPhone 17 Pro
DJI Action Pro 5
Insta 360 X5 -
Field Optics:
Sony FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS Super Telephoto Zoom Lens
Sony Alpha 70-350mm F4.5-6.3 G OSS Super-Telephoto APS-C Lens
Sony FE 24-105mm F4 G OSS
Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8Equipment:
Sony FE 1.4X Teleconverter -
The coast is a demanding workplace, and we only carry what has proven it can handle the salt, the spray, and the long hours of waiting. This list isn't just a collection of gear; it’s a selection of trusted essentials that meet our rigorous standards for field documentation. Whether we’re dockside or miles out at sea, these are the tools we rely on to keep the focus where it belongs: on documenting the wild exactly as it is.
Gear and Tech:
SIRUI P-325FS Monopod
SIRUI VA-5X Fluid Video
SmallRig HawkLock Quick Release Case
Peak Design Slide Camera Strap
INIU 140W Power Bank, 27000mAh
iShoot Replacement Lens Foot IS-THS260 for Sony FE 200-600mm
SMALLRIG Magnetic Metal Phone Mount with Cold Shoe Mount
SMALLRIG 9 in 1 CFexpress Type A Card Reader Docking Station
SmallRig x FILM RIOT 7-in-1 Folding Tool SetField Gear:
YETI 100L Panga Duffel
YETI 28L Panga Backpack
YETI 6L Dry Sidekick
YETI Large Rambler Bottle Sling
The North Face Recon Luxe Backpack
Therm-a-Rest Z Seat Cushion
Think Tank Emergency Rain Cover
LensCoat® Sony FE 200-600 G OSS
Grundens Deck-Boss Boots
Locations
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📍 Channel View Park — 29 Ocean Dr, Oxnard, CA 93035
Small park at the harbor entrance, just steps from Hollywood Beach. Sea lions often gather on the rocks and in the water - listen for their signature “arf”! No restrooms at the park, but facilities are available elsewhere in the harbor. Limited street and lot parking.📍 Bench Viewpoint (Near Salt + Noelle’s Dockside Studio) — 3141 Victoria Avenue, Oxnard, CA 93035
Public bench along the harbor walking path. Offers a clear view of occasional sea lions and local bird activity. Essentially the Salt + Noelle view, without being on our patio. Restroom on-site. Large parking lot available; parking fees unknown.📍 Kiddie Beach Park — 2721 Victoria Ave, Oxnard, CA 93035
Calm, protected cove inside Channel Islands Harbor. Great for families and swimming. Lifeguard on duty in summer. Showers, restrooms, and free parking on-site. Check water advisories after storms. Recently a major sea lion haul-out - maintain a safe distance and follow posted restrictions.📍 Hobie Beach — 2974-3098 Victoria Ave, Oxnard, CA 93035
Designated launch site for kayaks, SUPs, and small sailboats. Calm harbor water, easy marina access. Free parking in adjacent lot. Restrooms & showers nearby at Kiddie Beach.📍 Harbor East Park — Victoria Ave & Murre Way, Oxnard, CA 93035
Small, grassy park near Channel Islands Sportfishing. Free, limited parking on-onsite. Great place for casual birding.📍 Silver Strand Beach — 2525 Ocean Dr, Oxnard, CA 93035
Stretch of beach near harbor mouth, featuring rocky jetty haul-outs popular with sea lions. Parking and restrooms available at nearby beach access points.
What’s Been Happening
If you've been reading the Founders Journal, you already know the Community Active Wildlife Stewards (CAWS) certification came through in February, the Coastal Café livestream is running 24/7, and the storage bottleneck that held up half a year of content is finally resolved. A lot has happened since then.
Sea Otter Savvy brought me on as their Director of Marketing and Development. It's a fractional role, meaning I'm still running Salt + Noelle full time, still taking on new consulting and visual storytelling clients, and building out their nonprofit infrastructure alongside all of it. That means switching between a lot of hats: marketing, partnerships, event planning, donor communications, digital systems. It's the same type of work I've always done, just applied to a mission I care about deeply.
Michael and I traveled up north for a science research conference in Santa Cruz, where we got to spend time with Jeff Torquemada and Wendy Sparks of Jeff and Wendy Photography. Two people we genuinely adore and never run out of things to talk about. Outside of that, I've been shooting from the patio and backyard constantly, went to Morro Bay, put together Salt + Noelle handouts for conferences, worked through a ton of product samples for the shop, and really dialed in the Coastal Café livestream and bird feeder setup. San Miguel is still in the queue. The a7RV files are enormous and the workflow is a bit different from the A1 II. I've been saying "it's coming" for months, but at this point I'm considering holding off and making a return trip so I can do a then-and-now piece that highlights the seasonal change.
From left to right: a sea lion pup nurses in a hauled-out colony, a sea lion pup rests with its chin in the wet sand as water bubbles around its whiskers, and a sea lion pup rolls through the shorebreak at the harbor mouth.
The iNaturalist observation cards proved the concept. Three weeks of field data represented beautifully. But when I looked at where my time was actually going, weekly handcrafted cards weren't the best use of it. The observations are still going up on iNaturalist consistently, and that's the best place to follow what I'm documenting in real time. The cards may come back in a different format down the road, but right now, my energy is going where it needs to go.
Socials have been rough. I refuse to put out slop, so every post gets overthought. It's the most annoying paradox of running a studio: I can build a social strategy for someone else in an afternoon, but doing it for myself is paralyzing. I'm working on it. And then Pokémon Pokopia came out. I picked up a game for the first time in months. I have spent an unreasonable number of hours building little habitats for Pokémon on the couch with the cats when I should have been editing sea lion photos, and I refuse to feel bad about it. Sometimes the conservation photographer needs to build a fictional ecosystem…
Nursing at the Harbor Mouth
The photos and video featured in this post are from February 8th, four days before my CAWS certification came through. I'd picked up the A1 II right after Christmas, but weeks of rough weather and rain made it hard to get out and break it in. This was only my second real outing with the new body, and the colony at the Channel Islands Harbor mouth in Oxnard felt like the right place to practice with the 200-600mm. This is the nursing footage I mentioned in the February 12th observation cards. It took a while to get here, but here it is.
California sea lion (Zalophus californianus) pups nurse for six months to a year, though some continue longer depending on the mother's condition and food availability. Like all pinnipeds, California sea lions nurse on land. The mothers cycle between nursing onshore for a day or two and foraging trips offshore that can last up to five days. When she returns, the reunion is vocal. Mother and pup find each other by call and by scent, and a mother can pick out her own pup's voice from hundreds of others.
In the video and the gallery below, you can see a pup pressed into its mother's side, actively nursing. It doesn't always look the way you'd expect. Sometimes the pup is clearly latched but its body position looks almost identical to resting. The mother barely shifts. The rest of the colony barely acknowledges it. It's routine, but it's also the most important thing happening on this beach. Every nursing session is calories and immune support for a pup that's still months away from being able to feed itself.
The sea lions weren't the only ones at the harbor mouth that morning. A long-billed curlew was probing the wet sand at the surf's edge, its curved bill built for reaching sand crabs and worms buried well below the surface, and this one was pulling them up consistently. A double-crested cormorant surfaced offshore, staring directly at me with that unblinking stare before continuing its dive pattern.
From left to right: a California sea lion pup sits upright in the shallows at Channel Islands Harbor, a sea lion pup nurses against its mother with sand crusted around its closed eyelids, and a double-crested cormorant swims at the harbor mouth staring directly at the camera.
I have a lot more from this colony that still needs to make it to the blog, and I'm working through it. There's plenty more from this morning in the gallery below. Getting to watch a pup nurse undisturbed at the harbor mouth with no enclosure walls or crowd noise? Just a mother and her pup on the sand doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing? That is the reason I do this work. More soon.
This one's a traditional, shorter Whiskers in the Wild entry, but with a full gallery and long-form video to dig into. If you're interested in this kind of wildlife photography, video, and storytelling for your organization, visit the Partner With Us page or get in touch.
Gallery
All photos on this page have been downresed for faster web loading. You can click on any image to open the lightbox for an expanded view. Full-resolution files are available for licensed archival or professional use; please contact me for a rate sheet and access.
Ethical Documentation: Each image in this gallery was captured following our Admire from Afar ethical wildlife photography methodology. By utilizing professional telephoto lenses and maintaining a respectful distance, we ensure that every animal remains undisturbed and unaware of our presence. We never use baiting or interference; these visuals are a genuine, non-intrusive record of natural behavior.
