Erin Pickett at UC Santa Cruz, Long Marine Lab--You are what you eat, and well, so are elephant seals. At least as far as whiskers go- whisker composition changes with diet. There are a few biologists in the Costa lab studying diet using stable isotopes of whiskers. Last Spring five satellite tagged females were given a dose of an amino acid called glycine. Glycine is found naturally in the proteins of animals. Glycine made in the lab is full of nitrogen 15, a heavier version of a seal's biosynthesized nitrogen.

Ashley Pearson at Año Nuevo State Reserve, CA-- Last Thursday we went to recover Featherfoot’s tags from Año Nuevo only to find that someone else had already claimed them...A populations of barnacles had attached themselves to her head and back tags giving her some pieces of flair to show off!