The Americas: Everything to Know About San Miguel Island, Where Sea Lions & Sea Birds Hunt Together
The Americas puts a multi-species hunting trip on display in Episode 2, "The West Coast."
In the second half of The Americas’ special two-part premiere, narrated by Tom Hanks, viewers visited “The West Coast,” a sprawling coastline 2,000 miles long, boarded by the Pacific Ocean. If you start in Los Angeles and travel west into the Pacific, after about 100 miles you’ll come across San Miguel Island.
It’s the westernmost of the Channel Islands and is part of the Channel Islands National Park. It spans 9,500 acres, features a 500-foot plateau, lush vegetation, and gorgeous beaches. The island is uninhabited, but it’s home to tens of thousands of seals and sea lions. The skies are filled with sea birds which nest on nearby islands and feed along the beaches. In the waters off San Miguel Island, those sea lions and birds work alongside tuna to hunt anchovies.
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The Americas, Episode 2: Sea lions, tuna, sea birds, and whales hunt sardines together
Aside from a few camp sites and moderate tourism, you won’t find much humanity on San Miguel Island, but you will find the largest gathering of sea lions and seals on the planet. In the summers, more than 120,000 gather there to mate and raise their pups.
There are so many that they pile up on top of one another, lumbering awkwardly over land. But they’re graceful in the water, and strategic hunters. Sea lions can swim as fast as 25 miles per hour, and they can travel more than 100 miles from shore looking for food; but in the summers, they don’t need to. That’s because billions of anchovies make their way toward the shore, bringing a buffet to the island’s doorstep. Of course, just because the fish are there, doesn’t mean they’re easy to catch.
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The anchovies group themselves together into an amorphous blob known as a bait ball, a constantly moving mass of fish which makes it difficult to pick out any one fish. The sea lions can’t catch the anchovies on their own, but help is on the way.
“When people come to these shows, I want them to feel like they’re in a slightly blurred world of cinema,” The Americas Executive Producer Mike Gunton told NBC Insider. “These are documentaries, they are natural history, but when you get that kind of epic, multi-perspective thing, that sense of cinema, it’s very exciting for an audience. It makes them feel like they’re not in school, they’re on a rollercoaster ride.”
Tuna arrive by the hundreds, herding the bait ball toward the surface, but they won’t get too close. Sea lions also eat tuna, so they keep their distance. In the presence of tuna, the anchovies seemingly see the sea lions as the lesser threat, and they gather around the sea lions for safety. It’s a situation the sea lions take advantage of to fill their bellies.
Suddenly, tuna and sea lions are on the move, picking away at the bait ball one sardine at a time. All of that activity draws the attention of sea birds, who arrive to attack from above, but they aren’t the only ones. Humpback whales have also been drawn by the commotion and, rather than nibbling at fish in ones and twos, they devour the bait ball in a few easy gulps.
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“The coordination of it is of course a huge challenge, and you have to have a bit of luck. But you make your luck by doing research,” Gunton said. “You can’t do any of this without the backup of an amazingly knowledgeable and dedicated, and generous scientific community.”
The birds, the tuna, and the sea lions aren’t exactly friends, and they aren’t cooperating with any sort of intent or compassion, but they do depend on one another to get their fill before the whales show up to clear the table.
Where can you watch The Americas?
New episodes of The Americas debut Sundays at 8:00 p.m. ET on NBC and stream next day on Peacock.
