Melinda Fowler, at UCSC's Long Marine Lab -- May has been an intense month. We just deployed our 20th satellite tag this week. All our tags were deployed on adult female elephant seals.

These seals will carry their tags until they return in late December to early January to give birth to their pups. In the meantime, their tags will transmit their positions daily and their time-depth recorders will record their diving patterns.

Jane Stevens, in Berkeley, CA - Check out "Tagging of Pacific Predators" on KQED-TV's QUEST!

Melinda Fowler at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab - We started putting satellite tags on a new set of female elephant seals who will head to the ocean later this month for their long migration -- seven to nine months in the place they call home most of their lives -- the cold North Pacific Ocean.

Jane Stevens at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab -- Remember that cute black-coat elephant seal that was rescued on January 11? He was released earlier this month, with two other elephant seals, into his new habitat: the Pacific Ocean.

Melinda Fowler, UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab -- The female elephant seals we tagged this winter are returning early, and our satellite tag recoveries are starting off with a bang! Satellite tags were deployed on 23 adult female elephant seals from Año Nuevo during the breeding season, in late January and early February. Females normally forage for about 3 months before returning to land to molt—at which time we recover the tags. This year seems to be a bit of an exception, as the females are coming back in dr

Nicole Teutschel at Long Marine Lab, CA -- One of the best things about being a marine biologist is getting to ask questions about the oceans, and then figuring out how to get the answers. Many of the tags we deploy give us little clues, or puzzle pieces that we then get to put together in an attempt to discover the bigger picture. Professor Ken Yoda of the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Nagoya University in Japan was scratching his head trying to figure out a way to learn more about one of the missing pieces in the elephant seal puzzle: foraging.

Nicole Teutschel at Año Nuevo State Reserve, CA -- Last weekend we hiked down to the North Point harems on a mission to weigh Coya's and Flora’s weaners when we ran into Melinda and Cory, two E-Seal Team members doing resights -- looking for seals with flipper tags. They were on their way out, but had some great E-Seal gossip: Melinda had spotted a huge super-weaner in the dunes!

Jane Stevens at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab - In yesterday's post, turtle researcher George Shillinger chronicled his travels with Flat Ava and Flat Joe, who came to visit the TOPP labs. Flat Ava hung out with George. Flat Joe traveled with James Ganong. They're part of the Flat Stanleys Project. James is one of TOPP's ace computer programmers. He's the genius behind the animated maps that you see on the home page and species pages.

Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA -- Their proper name is weanlings. But we call them weaners. They've finished nursing. Most have gained 150 to 300 pounds. Almost all of their moms have headed back into the ocean. And now, among the dunes, willows and nooks and crannies of the beaches, a couple of thousand weaners clump together, in twos to twenties, going through their month-long fast.