Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! The five of us down here have pretty big meal
plans shaping up already. We are going to be smoking 2 turkeys and a very
large filet of salmon (roughing it in Antarctica!). We should also have
mashed potatoes, green beans and/or Brussels sprouts, deviled eggs, pumpkin
muffins, pumpkin pie (which I'm actually not a huge fan of, sorry), gravy,
maybe some gluten free stuffing if we get around to it, and whatever else
we can mix up. Its usually a pretty good day down here and we only have to
work a half day!

These days a half day isn't really saying much since its still been fairly
slow, but that's about to change. Just today I had 5 new female fur seals
show up (up to 7 total on my beaches, 15 total on the study beaches). There
are also 3 or 4 pups on our study beaches and a few of those females looked
pregnant, so there may be more tomorrow. I also had 2 tagged females, so
our work is definitely about to kick in.

The females are a little off this year. I think the weather and ice are
making some things difficult, but its not too unusual to have them
fluctuate by a few days. Typically older females show up first, who are
often not pregnant. That being said, most females show up on almost the
same day every year, which is extremely impressive when you think about it.
They also are usually on shore for about 1 day before they give birth.
However, if the weather is really crummy, they have been known to delay
coming ashore a day or two, which therefore means consciously delaying
giving birth! It's a little crazy when you think about it…

These ladies are also extremely tied to one specific spot, referred to as
site fidelity. I think I wrote about this last year, but its another
impressive feat of theirs- often, if they are tagged, even if you can only
get one or two digits of the tag, you can tell who it is just based on
where they are when they give birth. I could probably go to the beaches I
walked last year and tell you within about 30 feet where each female would
come ashore. The downside, as a population, of having such high site
fidelity is that it makes them very slow colonizers. Like salmon returning
to their natal stream, these fur seals don't tend to stray far when it
comes to breeding. Therefore, if things like climate change continue to
really affect everything down here, they can have a hard time shifting
their habits to adapt.

Even at the cape, fur seals were completely extirpated (locally depleted)
until the 1960s by Russian fur traders. Sometime in the 60s a few seals
happened to wander off course and come back to the Cape (they do breed in a
few areas around Livingston Island). Since then they steadily climbed in
numbers until peaking around 2002 or 2003. However, over the last 13 years
there has been a fairly substantial decline in the local population. I
learned today that a beach I monitored last year and counted a max of maybe
180 pups on used to have over 500 pups on it only a decade ago. It's a
little sad, especially for the people who have been coming here for many
years who can actually see and feel the differences.

On a happier note, we had an elephant seal weaner visit camp again today.
We've had 3 or 4 hanging out around camp chewing on any dangly bits they
can find- they really like some wires hanging off an old solar panel and
any pieces of string or rope hanging from the eves. They also enjoy laying
in our small trash pile because plastic bags are warmer than snow (they
probably like the smell too with their weird ability to lay in a wallow of
their own feces). Occasionally one of these guys (or girls) drops down into
the walkways we've dug out and finds itself confused as to how to get out.
The other day one was trying to nurse off the door to our outhouse and
today that same one came right up to one of the cabin windows to look in.
We actually were able to play peek-a-boo with it for a while and it seemed
amused, or at least confused/ intrigued. We could pop our heads up and he
would look at us, then when we hid again he would lift up trying to look to
see us. Tony and I have also gotten really good at speaking weaner (Tony
especially has a way with animal language) to the point where we can often
get them to call back to us and sometimes even start coming over in our
direction thinking we might be a friend! Its pretty much impossible not to
like these big squishy balls of awkwardness.

Anyway, that's it for now. We will probably start catching fur seals in the
next couple days as more come ashore. One of the females on my beach is a
target animal based on age and not having been captured in a long time, but
she is one of only 3 females on the beach with about 15 males, so it would
not be the best time for us to try to get in there. The boys need more
distractions before we get ourselves too much in the thick of it.

Some other updates

We had our first female fur seals show up yesterday! Basically the males
get here a couple weeks early to beat each other up and establish
territories, then the females start to show up and give birth. It typically
starts as a trickle, then suddenly there are moms and pups EVERYWHERE. The
overall noise levels on the cape jump dramatically (unless you are in the
penguin colonies, which are like downtown NYC all the time except with
squalks and trills and slaps instead of buses, helicopters, and street
performers.

Also, it sounds like our SitReps have started to be posted. SitReps (or
Situation Reports for the full fancy name) are our weekly updates of
essentially what is going on on the Cape. It has info about seabirds,
pinnipeds (seals), weather, and camp life. Most likely you wont find the
numbers overly meaningful, but they can still be a fun way to keep up with
what we are doing, especially as I trail off of actually writing anything
here. It also should include a picture or two!

The link is to the right (I think), or else its
https://swfsc.noaa.gov/aerd-field/

I am also working on possibly posting a picture every once in a while. It
will be small resolution to work with our email, but it still might be fun
and I think it will still work on here through just email (in case anyone
is wondering, all this is updated through email since we still have no real
internet down here).

Thats about it for now. Again, sorry this was not that fun or exciting. Its
been a lot more of prepping gear and just making sure everything is ready
for the onslaught that is coming in the next couple weeks.

Oh we did have one fun story. I already wrote about elephant seal weaners
and just the overall ridiculousness that is them. We went out to tag some
more the other day and caught one girl who was the biggest weaner I have
ever seen. She was rounder than most of the previous ones were long. It
looked like she had eaten another weaner. There were jelly rolls folding
over flippers, which barely touched the ground without extreme rolling. The
best part, though was that she knew she was big but she also was not going
to take any sh*t from us lightly. Often when animals get big like that they
kind of adopt a "I'm too big to be messed with" attitude and actually prove
to be much easier to work with overall. Not this girl. No Clertha/ Big
Bertha decided she would make it as difficult as possible for us to do
anything. I was the main wrangler, so my primary job was to control her
head and body. Anyone who has met me knows I'm not huge but I'm not exactly
a small person either. I have about 200 lbs to throw around when needed.
Well she knew that and just didnt care. She was the first weaner (really
the first animal I've ever worked with/ restrained) that just straight
picked me up and took me for a ride. She had both my knees off the ground
and carried me down the beach while trying to toss me off every which way.
Eventually I calmed her down, but then when Doug and Whitney (2 other seal
biologists here) went to touch her flippers, she flipped out again. They
each tried to restrain her hind end while I worked on the front and they
both got tossed like, well, a cowboy on a bucking bronco. In the end all 3
of us had to pile on her to slow her down again. Of course when you only
have 3 people, that makes then working on her difficult because everyone is
in a dogpile. So the pile did break up eventually, we got the work done we
needed to do, and we let her go as good as new. The stare she gave us at
the end though really said it all. There was no fear in her eyes, it didnt
even look like she was angry at her surprise awakening. To me it was more
like, ya you want to go again? Bring it on... humans. I like her.

We've seen her a few times since and she continues to show no fear. While
the other weaners around her will often start to run (bounce) away as we
walk up, which is normal whether you've captured them already or not, she
will stand her ground and just continue to scratch her belly by slowly
wriggling back and forth in place because I'm pretty sure her flippers
couldnt reach.

Quick Updates

Sorry I have not had time to write a full real update. The work has been
steadily increasing, though its certainly nowhere near full capacity yet
(we are probably working more like 6-8 hours instead of 10-12...).

The wind has been howling the last day or two. We had gusts up to 58 mph,
which is probably an underestimate since that anemometer is actually
blocked slightly from easterly winds, which happens to be the current wind
direction. Out at the bird blind by the penguin colonies the were
registering winds up to 67 mph yesterday afternoon and the winds only
increased overnight. Between that and an ever inquisitive sheathbill (bird)
deciding to peck at his reflection in every single window we have this
morning, it was a bit of a rough night for sleeping.

In other new, we have started range testing some of our VHF transmitters.
In simple terms that means we have some tags that emit a high frequency
beep that can only be heard by special receivers (its the same thing as
when you watch a nature documentary and see people with big headphones
walking through the forest with a big, multiprong antenna in their hands).
We have these handheld receivers, but we also have 2 permanent listening
stations on two of the hills around here, so we have to set those up and
calibrate them. We also try to figure out where exactly their coverage is
weakest, so we know that if we tag any animals in those areas, we may need
additional means to track their comings and going.

Otherwise its just continuing to set up and test gear, make sure we are
fully prepared for when things actually get going. We've continued to make
some good food- I made a shrimp and scallop scampi over linguini the other
night and we had a delicious group-cooked taco tuesday with some kind of
southwest style corn, sweet potato, garlic, onion, honey, and spices
filling. I will shoot for more real updates soon, but things will start to
get busy in the next week or so, so no promises.

Sorry this wasn't funny either. I try, but when I write in the morning my
brain is still working on just functioning. Also, we got word of the Paris
attacks the other day (we were a few days late). Our hearts definitely go
out to anyone connected to that area. There is never a just reason to
commit crimes like that. Sometimes its nice to check out from the world a
little down here...

Stormy Days

Quick update on this since I wrote it a couple days ago: I did shower and
it was phenomenal! It was also continued to snow, but the wind has died
down for the moment...
----------------------------------------------------------

The past few days have been slow. Work is limited by the lack of animals on
beaches and the wind has restricted even what we can do around camp. For
several hours today we had sustained winds of 30-40 mph with a few gusts in
the 50s. If you don't know what that feels like, lets just say it can knock
you off your feet.

Of course, the wind is just intensified by the snow already on the ground.
In its perennial attempts to rearrange the snow on the cape, the wind has
been making it essentially snow from the ground up, constantly spitting a
cold wet sneeze right in your face. In the time it took me to open one
door, close it behind me, then open another directly adjacent, then return
through both doors, I got essentially soaked with snow. Of course it's nice
to have a nice (relatively) warm cabin to return to, but this just makes
the snow melt and soak you even deeper.

All this is not exactly being said to gain any kind of sympathy. I
understand that growing up in coastal California I never had the joys of
shoveling a driveway or shoveling out my car (or snow days for that
matter!). And while I got a taste of that joy in college near Philadelphia,
I still was living on campus where someone else plowed the paths to class
and a dining hard was just a few slippery steps away. HOWEVER (and I'm sure
I talked about this last year, but here it is again) I seriously doubt any
of you snow dwellers had to get up every morning and shovel out your
bathroom! How about your pantry or refrigerator? Basically if I want to go
pee in the morning, I have to don a bulky jacket, gloves, hat, warm pants,
real shoes, and often glasses or goggles and go shovel out the back door,
followed by the outhouse. That or you just brave the cold in minimal
clothing, run through the night's drifts, and just pee in the snow behind
the buildings. Of course this not only is a shock to the system, but runs
the risk of the snow behind the buildings actually being a 3 foot snow berm
that you and your sandals are now knee deep in. Trust me there has been
many a morning where I've woken up early and just laid away holding it and
suffering because it just wasn't worth it yet.

In other news, since we had a lot of time on our hands, I made a pretty
awesome dinner for everyone tonight. We had chicken cordon bleu (with blue
cheese instead of swiss and Serrano ham), roasted asparagus with a homemade
hollandaise sauce, and quinoa with sautéed vegetables and balsamic vinegar.
Oh I also- surprisingly for the first time despite my love for it- made ice
cream. Cookies n cream to be exact. And Whitney, my awesome new pinniped
assistant made brownies and fresh bread because she was bored…

Next few days should bring more elephant seal weaner wrangling, setting up
some final things as the wind dies down, range testing our vhf tag
receivers, and beginning our fur seal censuses. Ooo I also plan on
showering on Thursday (so hopefully its already happened by the time this
goes up). My last shower was Monday. Of last week… We've been here about 16
days so far. I have taken 1 shower, worn 3 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of
underwear, 2 sleeping shirts and 2 work shirts, deodorant once, and have
shaved zero times. Actually fun anecdote, Whitney showered yesterday and
today she was standing next to me and I asked her what that smell was. Not
in a mean way but just in a strange way. She said it was cleanliness and
deodorant. I was clearly thrown for a loop by it all. I put on deodorant
after that and just felt weird. Sure my armpits maybe smelled slightly
better, but the shirt I was wearing still smells bad, along with my socks
and the rest of my clothes. Just a reminder that deodorant and baby wipes
only go so far I guess.

Keeping Up As Best I Can

Unfortunately I do not have much to write here. Of course I tend to say
that then get on a ramble that turns out, in fact, to be very long indeed.
Regardless, it's not to say that nothing has happened, just that, for the
most part, it has been uninteresting to most "normal" people. We got our
weather stations and tag transmission receiving stations set up (for later
fur seal monitoring), we started prepping our lab and continued finding/
unpacking things around camp, we have done a couple cape-wide phocid (seal,
not fur seal though) censuses, and we finally today went out and actually
did some work with elephant seal weaners.

I have to imagine I wrote about the elephant seal weaners last year, though
I will be honest I do not remember what exactly I wrote and don't feel
bothered enough to look it up. I do remember explaining though that they
are called weaners because they have recently weaned from their mothers (or
really the mothers forced them to wean by leaving).

When elephant seals wean, they are literally too fat to swim. Well,
hopefully they are at least- if all went according to plan and mom had
plenty of fat to pass on. They are butterballs in the shape of a sausage
with big eyes and a few undersized flippers stuck on in a way that they
rarely actually reach the flattened snow beneath their massive bellies
except during the great undulations that slowly bounce them around the
Cape.

They also tend to not be the smartest of all animals. Pretty much all they
know at this point, other than basic bucking, squirming, and chicken-like
squawks as defense mechanisms is the game "Does this fit in my mouth and
can I eat it?" It's a lot like watching a toddler discover the world one
mouthful at a time. Except this toddler weighs 200 lbs and has their feet
and hands attached directly to their torso, bypassing the need for legs or
arms altogether. That is how an elephant seal do.

Of course this bumbling awkwardness of jelly rolls and gumming snowballs
does give them some very endearing qualities. It is just about impossible
not to smile when you see one. Watching the effort they go through just to
be able to see you around their own bellies makes you just want to go up
and squeeze them. Even, despite the fact that they are, like most elephant
seals, covered in a mixture of their own feces and that of others, you
still want to just cuddle them. There was a group of three closely huddled
together today that I really wanted to just join as a middle spoon. I'll
tell you one thing- it would be plenty warm in there (did anyone else just
get the image of the ton ton on Hoth from the Empire Strikes Back? Maybe
you have to actually be very cold trudging through the snow when looking at
these guys to jump there…).

Anyway, that's my brief introduction to elephant seal weaners. For more
information, please consult www.google.com. If a friend asks you about
them, feel free to send them a link from www.lmgtfy.com (it stands for let
me google that for you and is a very entertaining little tool. It continues
to be cold here, with occasional glimpses of sun and warmth. I don't think
its been above freezing for more than a few hours in the last 4-5 days and
we are getting some decent winds tonight (30-40mph). Apparently there is
also a storm coming our way early next week, so that should be fun. Luckily
the bulk of our work (fur seals) has not showed up yet. Literally. There
are only a handful of males on beaches at the moment, though there are more
showing up every day. We also have seen an unusual amount of crabeater
seals, particularly young animals. That includes several juveniles and a
pup crabeater, which offhand nobody could remember ever having seen here
before! We have a few weddells as well, including a few ladies with freakin
ADORABLE pups. Just saying.

Goodnight y'all, I'm going to try to go to sleep before the wind picks up
and keeps me awake!

Back At It

I had not planned on continuing this blog during my second time around in
the Antarctic. However, I've had a lot of encouragement from friends and
family to keep it going, so I will just say that I will do what I can. I
will try to not repeat stories from last year too much and will do what I
can to continue to be funny (though I admit you can only laugh at someone
for so long…). So here goes nothing! If you're new, then welcome. If you've
stopped in before, then you should probably find more exciting things to do
with your life (but thanks for staying interested all the same).

I'm back! Officially landed in Antarctica this past Monday October 26. For
those of you who don't know or have forgotten in the little hiatus, I am
back at Cape Shirreff on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands
off the Antarctic peninsula. I am working as a contractor for the National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as part of its
Antarctic Marine Living Resources program (see the links to the right ----
).

I work primarily with Antarctic fur seals, but also do a lot of work with
leopard, southern elephant, and weddell seals. We also periodically see
crabeater seals, but don't do any real research on them. In addition, I
frequently help out with penguin science that also happens at the Cape. I
live in a small camp (yes there are real structures, though its fairly
rudimentary- no running water or anything like that) with 4 other people, 3
men and 1 woman. Three of us focus on seal work, while the other two mostly
work with penguins and other sea birds. I am here for the next five months
and get back to Chile around late March. Oh and while I'm here I only have
very limited email and satellite phone options so don't plan on being able
to get in touch with me. If you have questions or concerns, feel free to
leave a comment below and I will try to have someone monitoring them for
me.

Ok getting into it…

So for the first time ever, we had a real scare of not being able to make
it to Cape Shirreff due to ICE! I have to say, it was pretty cool actually
plowing through various ice flows to get here. Arguably it wasn't exactly
like trying to scrape ice off your windshield, more of a dragging your
spoon through pudding kind of experience, but still. I got to be on an ice
breaker (sorta) breaking ice! And there are tons of large icebergs floating
around too! So that's exciting.

Luckily, despite all the ice, we were able to make landfall with the
zodiaks and fully deploy all our gear. We even managed to get a ton of
awesome volunteers, who were on their way to Palmer Station or were stuck
on the ship doing various kinds of research, to come help schlep gear for
us. That combined with the fact that the snow levels were eerily low this
year means we are actually way ahead of schedule for opening camp. Usually
we spend half of our time these first few days just shoveling out doors and
windows to attempt to start to organize things. This year we had every door
open by day 1.

And before you start asking, no I do not know why the snow level was so
low. Did climate change play a role? Probably. Is it just a weird year?
Probably. El Niño? Sure why not? We did look at our overwinter temperature
logger and it did seem to be a particularly cold winter, so maybe that
played a role? And as I mentioned, we don't usually have ice around here at
this time of year, so something strange is definitely going on.

There is a ton more I could start to say if I let myself ramble, but I'm
going to cut things off here and leave it mostly as an intro post. Again
thank you to anyone new who is interested. Writing this is a little weird
because I pretty much never actually see the reverse side of people reading
it or talking about it, but I like to pretend lots of people care. If
nothing else, maybe it starts to make up for my missing tons of birthdays,
holidays, and other social events (sorry!).

Happy Halloween! We might do some trick or treating at each others bunks…