Though it seems the whale has an advantage, it has to be careful not to get stranded on the beach. As the pups play in the surf a whale comes, trying to snatch them. Every year along the coast of Patagonia, a group of killer whales makes an appearance at exactly the same time as the sea lion pups are starting to swim. When they emerge from the water they are still white but they soon turn pink! At sea they restrict their blood flow to the center of their bodies to keep in the heat, but when they land they dilate their vessels and blood flushes their skin. Walruses come to the land each year to molt and rest from the cold, and on Round Island in the northern Pacific 40,000 of them cram onto a mile or so of beach. They return together to their cliffside nests to avoid the peregrines, ravens and sea eagles that swoop on them in mid-air.
As sunset approaches, hundreds of thousands of crested auklets appear out to sea like great clouds of smoke. The world's largest eagle, the Stellar's sea eagle, steals kittiwakes from their nesting cliffs. In summer, four million seabirds crowd the cliffs of Talan, in the Sea of Okhotsk in Eastern Russia. Every year, millions of capelin appear along the coasts of Newfoundland, throwing themselves out of the sea writhing along the beach for miles. Fish also drag themselves on the beach to lay eggs. Four hundred thousand Ridley's turtles coordinate their return to land in a massive simultaneous egg lay called an arribada. The whole cycle takes six months and the turtles do not feed at all during this time. After laying three to four clutches of eggs each every two weeks or so, they make the return journey to Brazil.
Each year the population of green turtles living off the coast of Brazil undertakes a massive 5,000-mile migration to the tiny island of Ascension.
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