I have many things I could update here, but unfortunately its late and I'm
tired, so I wont go into too much detail (famous last words).
First things first, tomorrow (Jan 31st) is my birthday! Hurray for me. I
actually really don't like making a big deal about my birthday, but when
you are in a small group of people looking for any excuse to celebrate, you
inevitably get a party. We are smoking some turkeys, making lots of food,
cake, ice cream, drink… the usual stuff. Even in this far away land you can
put together a pretty good birthday party. Of course we also still have to
work, so that's a bit of a bummer, but I think we will keep the work to a
minimum (or I hope at least). I'm also hoping to shower, which will be my
first shower since Thursday… of last week…
In other news, we continue to catch fur seals to put out fancy instruments
or recover old ones. These tags tell us things like where the seal goes,
how its diving (depth, temperature), and we have some new tags that
actually tell us the three dimensional movements of the seal every 1/8th of
a second, which is kind of crazy when you think about it. Every turn, spin,
lunge, etc. is recorded. When you get it all together you can actually
reconstruct a seal's dive down to its every move. We are hoping to be able
to decipher what they are eating (krill or fish) based on that behavior
(e.g. you have to chase fish more). I likely wont be a big part of the
analysis of the data, but I hope someone fills me in later!
So during one of these captures I also go bit… again. Anyone who read this
last year might remember my harrowing, dramatic, definitely not over
exaggerated story of being chased down the beach by a crazy female fur seal
that ultimately caught up to me and gave me a good chomp on the finger.
Well this wasn't nearly as dramatic, though it was my left hand that got
the damage again.
The short version of the story is that we were capturing a seal who was
particularly feisty and had managed to keep herself from getting fully into
the narrowed end of the net. Among my many jobs here is restraining the
animals while they are in the net until we can sedate them and its safe to
get off the animal. When they get themselves in weird positions in the net,
it can mean that I have to simultaneously try to keep them from moving too
much and move them around to get them into proper position. Basically in
this case, I thought her head was more restricted than it was and she
managed to spin on my and tag me. It was not a terrible bite since it was
through the net and somewhat of a glancing blow, but it did remove a chunk
of skin about an inch long and half an inch wide on my thumb (along with a
~1/2 inch cut in the middle of the removed skin). She also got my index
finger and the top of my thumb a little in the process, but they were just
little cuts. Fortunately, due to the adrenaline of the capture, I didn't
even realize she had really cut me until I took off my gloves back at camp
30 minutes later.
The moral of the story is it was my fault I got bit. The seal was just
defending herself after I had thrown a net on her and jumped on her. I
should have been more cautious about where her head was and how much wiggle
room she had (plus she was just sneaky). I was lucky it wasn't worse, but
when you work hands-on with animals, getting bit is just part of the risk.
It is a good reminder to not take things for granted or let your guard
down. Although most of the seals here are fairly accustomed to our
presence, they are still wild animals. A full-size male fur seal could do
some serious damage, if not probably kill me if he really wanted to. Lucky
for us, they generally choose not to pick huge fights with us and just beat
up on each other.
That's it for now. And just so you know, yes getting bit by a seal can
carry a huge risk of infection (their mouths are nasty!), but I have been
keeping my cuts super clean and am going to be just fine (the cut on my
thumb didn't even break my latex glove!). Its getting a little harder for
me to keep up with writing this, but I will try.
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