Ashley Pearson at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA-- The E Seal Team spends a lot of time on the beach resighting, tagging, weighing, measuring, and collecting samples.  However, the E Seal Team's day doesn't end when we leave the beautiful Año Nuevo State Reserve coastlines.  Back to the lab we enter loads of data!  In the field we keep track of seals that we have seen so that we can enter it into our databases. We use the databases to track information like:

    -Age
    -What harem he/she was spotted in
    -If they had a pup
    -Defining marks (administered using Lady Clairol)
    -Their ID number located on their flipper tags!

 ...and any other observations we can collect in the field.

The database on paper, this is one of 9 pages (with 25 known seals on each page)!  Photo: Ashley Pearson

A close-up on part of the chart.  Photo:  Ashley Pearson

In addition to the paperwork, we also process blood samples.  Each time we apply, or remove tags from a seal, we take a blood sample that can be used to learn about elephant seal physiology.   The first thing we do is measure hematocrit levels, or what percent of the animal's blood is made of red blood cells. Red blood cells are awesome! These nifty little cells travel through your blood, binding to oxygen. Then, red blood cells deliver oxygen throughout the body. E seals have much more red blood cells than we land mammals because they rely on this extra oxygen storage when they dive.  This extra oxygen helps out a lot! Can you hold your breath for a 20 minute dive!?!?
 

Erin Pickett, a E Seal Team intern, setting up the blood work station before processing.  Photo:  Ashley Pearson
 

After crits are measured we spin the blood in a centrifuge, at over 5,000 rotations per minute. This separates various components of the blood allowing us to collect: plasma, serum, red blood cells, and white blood cells (which have DNA in them!). This process prepares the samples so that they can be used to study things like oxygen storage in blood, hormone levels, diet, fat signatures, and genetics.

Two "green tops" (can you guess why we call them that??) on the rocker. Photo:  Ashley Pearson

Erin Pickett pipettes samples of whole blood before putting the remaining blood in the centrifuge.  Photo:  Ashley Pearson

Patrick Webster, a student volunteer, puts blood in the centrifuge to separte the blood into red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma, and serum.  Photo:  Ashley Pearson

The end result after all the spinning and processing.  The top tube has red blood cells, the middle has white blood cells, and the bottom has plasma.  Photo:  Ashley Pearson.

This is the typical amount of cryovials (tiny little tubes) we fill with the various components of e seal blood from one seal!  Photo:  Ashley Pearson.