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.
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