Every winter about 10,000 elephant seals make their way to California’s Año Nuevo State Park to fight, mate and give birth.(Video )

 PESCADERO, Calif. (AP) — Every winter about 10,000 elephant seals make their way to California’s Año Nuevo State Park to fight, mate and give birth. The spectacle runs from mid-December through March, drawing wildlife watchers eager for a glimpse of the largest seals on the planet.

During what park docent Laura Stern called “pupping season,” bull seals — some reaching up to 16 feet (4.9 meters) in length and weighing up to 2.5 tons — engage in bloody battles for breeding access to the females.

“So most elephant seals come back to the same beach where they were born. They don’t all, but most of them do,” Stern said. “And we have about 10,000 elephant seals that come to Año Nuevo.”

Elephant seals were hunted nearly to extinction in the 1800s, sought out for their blubber, which was used to make oil. In 1892, fewer than 100 of the animals remained on a small island off the coast of Baja California.

Recognizing the crisis, the Mexican government extended legal protection to the species in 1922, followed shortly by protection in the United States. Today the population has grown to an estimated 250,000 seals living in the Pacific.