Luis Huckstadt at Punta Arenas, Chile--We are finally back to civilization after a successful field season at Cape Shirreff, Antarctica. I'm happy to report that we accomplished our goal of deploying 15 satellite tags on southern elephant seals (see Cool Cousins). This work could not have been done without the great crew that helped us at the Cape Shirreff camp. The "Seal Team" (aka "Grupo Elite de Captura de Focas") was an exceptional group of enthusiastic people willing to help in any imaginable and unimaginable ways, who would never say no to the work with these colossal seals of the South.

Part of the Seal team (or "Grupo Elite de Captura de Focas") watching

an elephant seal ready to leave after the procedure.The rainy and cold

weather did not affect the team's spirit toget the work done.

Photo by Carolina Bonin

Cape Shirreff is an exceptional place on Earth, where you have contact with Antarctic wildlife 24/7. Everyday we would be woken up by fur seal pups playing (and not very quietly) outside our camp! They would often claim our deck at the camp!!!

Fur seals' breeding season was already over by the time we got to camp (early January), but there were still some juvenile males holding to the hope of defending a harem. Pups were growing very fast, and several of them have already started to molt their newborn dark fur for a brand new silver coat.

Antarctic fur seal mom and pup "bonding". Photo by Luis Huckstadt

Elephant seal molting season is almost over, which is the reason why we traveled across the globe to deploy instruments during this time of year. We deploy instruments (satellite tags) as soon as they get their new fur. This way we can be sure that our instruments will be in place for a whole year. After a year of data collection, the tags will simply fall off when the seals haul out to molt. Elephant seals go through an annual "catastrophic molt", which basically means that they loose all fur and skin in big patches all at once.

Elephant seals at Cape Shirreff have some preferred spots to hang out while waiting to molt. There are several "wallows" where over 200 animals can aggregate during the peak molting season. As we were finishing, the seals had moved down to the beach, getting ready to leave for their 8 months long foraging trip in the Southern Ocean.

Southern elephant seals' wallow at Cape Shirreff, Livingston Island (Antarctica). Photo by Luis Huckstadt

What about our deployments!? Well, we tagged a total of 15 adult female Southern elephant seals in only 9 days. The smallest seal we captured was 728 lb (330 kg), and 8.5 ft long (2.60m), while the biggest seal was not much longer with 8.66 ft long (2,64 m) but she weighed over 1,265 lb (576 kg)!!!! Most animals have already started their trip, and we hope the other 1 or 2 animals still on the beach will be leaving the Cape pretty soon. Check out the real-time tracks here, as the seals travel through out the Southern Ocean.

That's all for now! Soon I'll be headed up to Uruguay to study another marine predator: Southern sea lions…

Southern elephant seal, proudly wearing her high-tech CTD tag. Photo: Mike Goebel