Final Updates

Its been a while. I apologize for that. Also, this will be the last
post I make for this season.

Currently I am bobbing off the coast of Argentina waiting to enter the
Straights of Magellan and transit over to Punta Arenas, Chile. My camp
got picked up by the Laurence M. Gould on the 19th and we have been
making our way north since. We are actually way ahead of schedule,
having made very good time across Drake's passage. Unfortunately, its
more costly and logistically difficult for the ship to arrive 2 days
early than it is for them to just drive super freaking slow for a day or
two. We will still get in a day early, but we have been going about 5-7
knots for the last 24 hours. That's a light jog.

The only thing worse than being trapped on a ship with nothing to do
for 4+ days is to be trapped on a ship that is known for being extremely
rocky. The Gould is a great ship for its basic functions- like staying
afloat and providing a bed for travelers. Beyond that it largely
resembles a bright orange bath toy with little water wings on either
side of the bow. I've heard conflicting reasons for the water wings-
they may be to help stabilize the boat when its main crane is in
operation, or its to help the ship break through ice. The ship is
considered ice class, meaning its not exactly an ice breaker, but it can
deal with ice a couple inches thick. The way ships like this generally
do that isn't so much by plowing into the ice, but actually they
essentially drive the bow onto the ice and crush it. Therefore, the
water wings help give the front some extra buoyancy to get on top of the
ice. Also to help this, the hull is generally very rounded so it can
slide up on top of the ice. Again, anyone who knows a little about boats
will recognize that round hulls just slosh around in the waves.

Pretty much this all comes together to say I felt pretty sick the first
day or two. As much as it pains me to admit it, I do get seasick. I wish
I didn't, but I can't exactly help it. Exacerbating the problem is the
fact that until Saturday I hadn't been on a single moving object, except
a few brief runs on an ATV going about 7mph on solid ground. Try to
imagine that. Imagine you haven't sat in a car, bus, train, airplane,
even a bicycle since October! Then jump on fallen tree trunk and try to
ride it down some class 4 rapids. It's a bit of a shock to the system.

On the upside, I have adjusted (and we reached calmer waters), so now I
just get to be bored instead of bored and feeling like crap.

Before the ship picked us up, we were able to fully close camp and get
some special projects in too. As far as I know, we officially had the
longest continuous stay at Cape Shirreff of any Americans. We were
dropped off a few days earlier than usual and picked up a couple weeks
later than usual (all due to boat schedule, not our call). I somewhat
selfishly made sure I was the first one to get off the zodiac back in
October and I slyly positioned myself to be the last one on the zodiac a
few days ago so I can say I officially hold that record by a few
seconds. Stupid? Yes. Maybe a little petty? Probably. Am I happy about
it anyway? Absolutely.

This season has to have been one of the better experiences I've had in
a long time. I was extremely impressed by my crewmates and had more fun
with all of them than I would have thought possible. Its always a tricky
situation when your world shrinks like that. Suddenly you have only a
handful of people who, depending on the day, are now your best friends,
your coworkers, your confidants, your enemies, your everything just
about. This is of course not to undermine the love and support I have
gotten from people back home, which I am immensely appreciative of. But
it also makes you realize how one bad egg could change everything in
place where you cannot escape that person.

Because of how well this season went, there is a good chance I will end
up back down here as early as this coming October. I have to see how
some things play out, but it is a distinct possibility. Plus I ALREADY
miss the puppies! The whole crew went on a walk the day before we got
picked up to an area dubbed the puppy ponds. Basically its just a small
runoff pond that formed this year where up to 50 pups can be found just
frolicking. It very well might be one of the happiest places on Earth.
When the pups are wrestling each other or scratching themselves to aid
in grooming/molting, they are usually practicing their acrobatic moves.
When we were there these moves mostly were launching yourself out of the
water onto the icy shore surrounding the pond and practicing porpoising
(jumping out of the water as you swim, like a dolphin).

Often both these activities result in adorable failures. Porpoising
becomes shooting straight up in the air then belly flopping back down
into the water. Launching onto the shore is often undermined by poor
judgements of distance resulting in crashing into the bank or another
pup. Even when they do make it up on shore (which to be fair was most of
the time), they had to contend with the fact that it was so icy and
smoothed out by EVERYONE doing this, that they often couldn't get much
of a grip. This would result in them pulling a Shamu at SeaWorld type
move of jumping onto the ledge and then slowly sliding sideways back
into the water. Even funnier is when one of the bigger pups decides to
be tough and waits on the edge for another pup to launch out of the
water. The big pup then runs over and pushes the jumper back in the
water with a solid chest bump. And don't worry, sometimes it works in
reverse. Sometimes the big pups try to keep other pups on shore,
practicing their herding instincts and trying to form tiny puppy harems.
This often ends in everyone slip sliding into the water and then trying
to race to see who can get back on shore fastest. Or when in doubt, just
go for the big rock in the middle of the pond to proclaim yourself King
of the Rock.

So just multiple all that by 30-50 seals and you have yourself a pretty
good time. The pups there also tend to be a little friendlier and more
naïve to our presence. Every 2 weeks in January and February we would
weigh 100 pups to get an idea of how healthy the population is.
Unfortunately, this activity often means breaking the trust of some of
the pups because they don't exactly enjoy being caught. However, the
pups at the ponds were generally from an area we never went to for these
weights, so they are still curious about us.

When you first show up at the ponds, its completely normal to have 15
pups come rocketing out of the water and lining up on the shore to stare
at you. Much like dogs, they will often do the adorable head tilt thing
when looking at you as if trying to get a better view. Sometimes they
even turn around and look at you upside down as if that will somehow
make you make more sense. If you sit down for a little bit, they will
often come right up to you and feel you out by chewing on every dangly
thing of yours they can find. This often includes zippers, straps, ski
poles, and fingers. After a while, they get bored and return to playing
with each other, but if you really commit to staying there (or take a
nap there as Whitney has on more than one occasion), you will often end
up with on crawling over you or tickling your nose with their whiskers
to investigate you more. It's a hard place to leave sometimes.

Ok enough rambling about puppy ponds. As some of you may know, I am
planning on traveling for about a month before heading back to the US. I
will be going through Patagonia and the Chilean Lake District, as well
as spending some time in and around Santiago and Buenos Aires. So I will
continue to have limited email access. That being said, limited email is
better than no email, so feel free to email me or leave comments here if
you need to reach me.

::Photo Notes::
My favorite pup who managed to make it the entire season!
Some pups in one of the many ponds, though this one isnt at the big one
I talk about above.
Closing crew minus Jesse our NOAA Corps officer

Delayed updates

I originally wrote this Feb 17, but forgot to send it. Oops...


Things have generally started to slow down around here, though we do still
have occasional busy days. We had a wave of bad weather this week with the
worst being Tuesday where winds hit 66 mph at the main camp and 98 mph at
the bird blind! 98 miles per hour. That's a lot of miles. In many places
they would call that a hurricane. Here its just a weather day. It did mean
we mostly stayed inside all day and caught up on data entry/ watched some
movies. We managed to go out later that afternoon and do basic resights,
but everyone avoided the hills and particularly gusty areas. I did get to
run down one hillside like I had a tether attached so I could lean way
forward and despite feeling like I was running fast not actually going all
that far.

We've also started getting fledge weights on the chinstrap penguin chicks.
This involves getting up before sunrise (so about 4:45am these days),
trudging out to the penguin blind (which is really more of a small shack
than a blind), changing clothes, going down to the intertidal, and looking
for the small, very confused looking birds nervously contemplating what
will happen when they make that eventual leap into the great unknown.
Usually the first thing they will come across is another rock- it takes
them a while to learn how to steer in the water.

Anyway, when we find these birds that are just about to fledge, we snatch
them up and weigh them before sending them on their way. Weight at fledging
can say a lot about a chicks chances at survival to the next year so it is
really important data. Unfortunately today was the first day we went out
and the chicks all got together and made a pact to wait a few days longer.
So Tony and I searched in vain, go zero weights off zero fledglings, and
came trudging home to try to go back to sleep for another hour or so. (Feb
23 update- Matt went out and got 53 fledge weights this morning, so they
are definitely getting things together)

I say trudging a lot because with all the wind the last couple days, it has
also snowed and been cold (a couple degrees below freezing- and yes I
realize the east coast is currently going through some freezagedon again).
So our paths are now all snow/ice covered and make walking difficult again.
Hurray… Last year it didn't snow until late February or March and that
barely stuck. I think this last coating will melt, but it still makes
things difficult for the time being.

We also have a new camp leader flying in tomorrow (got delayed, should be
here Feb 23 or 24), which will be interesting. I have met him before and
really like him, it just means changing the dynamic of the camp again.

The new guy is the head of the penguin program too, which will be great to
get some questions about penguins answered, but also means I will be back
to being in charge of all things seal related. Its great to have the extra
responsibility, but it can also be a little terrifying to have the extra
responsibility! It will be fine though and realistically we only have a
couple more weeks of work here before we begin closing camp, inventorying
everything, and prepping for the ship to arrive and take us away and back
into the real world where I hear everything is happy and peaceful and
nothing dumb is happening with politics ever… We get the New York Times
digest here, I know that may not be exactly how the world is at the moment.
Oh and no, I did not see Star Wars yet! I'm working on it!

In other news (added 23 Feb), we rescued an entangled juvenile fur seal
today. It had some nylon twine around its neck that was starting to cut
into the skin. We were able to grab him really quickly, remove the twine,
and send him on his way. It was my first experience disentangling an animal
(that I hadnt intentionally ensnared...). Its nice to do some good and
have an actual, tangible positive impact every now and then, even if its
just on one animal.

Celebrating on the other end of the world

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.

Welcome

Hi there, its been a while. I've been told that the Swarthmore magazine
article is out, which had brief bio thing about the work I've been doing
and a link to this page. While I doubt many people will actually take the
time to take the magazine to their computer, type in the blog address-being
careful to spell my name right and what not, and they actually read this
(or maybe just click a link if the article is online too), I figured I
would give a brief synopsis of myself and my work and this site.

First off, let me just say I never intended to start a blog, and I largely
still do not view this as one. Yes it's a blogging site and I semi-
routinely make posts about most nothing, but still. It started because for
the last 2 years I have been working in remote field camps that have
extremely limited email (and no internet). Instead of writing 20 different
people the same stories, then responding to their 20 replies and infinite
more questions, I only told a select few my email address while I'm away
(hurray if you know it, if you don't, its nothing personal). This mostly is
stories, often played up to seem more dramatic or humorous than they really
were, about these places I've been, the work I've participated in, and the
animals that really are the reason for all of it.

So now that that is out of the way- My name is Wiley. I graduated
Swarthmore in 2010 with a BA in Biology. After Swat I worked in the SF bay
area on invasive plant mapping and eradication. Plants are not my typical
subject of choice, but it got me outside in the mud and it paid. In 2011 I
moved to Arcata, CA to start a Masters degree at Humboldt State University,
where I studied harbor seals, as well as Grey, humpback, and blue whales.
Along the way I've also worked with captive animals in both zoo and
research settings.

After (mostly) finishing my Masters in 2014, I finagled my way into a job
monitoring Steller's sea lion on Marmot Island, Alaska with the National
Marine Mammal Lab, a small branch of NOAA (the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration) based in Seattle. This work took me to a small
island near Kodiak, AK where I spent the summer in a small cabin on the
cliffs looking for marked sea lions and observing reproductive success and
behaviors. There were 4 people on the island- me and one other guy in our
camp, and two other people on the other side of the island, who we would
see about once a week.

Next up, while sitting in a parking lot of a camp ground in Denali National
Park, I was offered a position working at the NOAA field camp at Cape
Shirreff in Antarctica studying Antarctic fur seals. I obviously was not
about to say no to that, though it has required being away for 5 months at
a time on a remote island for the last two winters (Antaractic summers).
Its here in Antarctica that most of these stories come from and its here
that I've really grown the most as a researcher (and we will just say as a
person too because it sounds poetic).

I invite you to check out the stories (old ones are funnier) and some of
the links that are either to the right or at the bottom of the page. Maybe?
I've only actually seen this page a handful of times. Unfortunately because
of the aforementioned email restrictions I cannot post my email address
here, but if you leave a comment (or email wiley.archibald@gmail.com)
saying you want to get in touch I will happily reply in April or May when I
am back in the US. If its more urgent, there are a few people that read
this who do have my email here, so they can probably pass the word along
and I will do what I can to make contact. I'm happy to reply to questions
about the work we do here, remote living, job offers…

Anyway I hope this at least peaks some people's interests in some of the
work that goes on in places most people never even think about. There is a
whole "behind the scenes" level of research about fisheries and climate
change and just how the world is changing. These little projects in the
most remote reaches of the world, are often the first one to tell you that
generally something is wrong. It happens before the massive storms, before
the cities are flooded by a rising ocean, and before thousands of animals
right in front of everyone's faces begin to die. I know I don't need to
preach to anyone who would find their way to this site to begin with, but
the more who know, the better.

Sun and Snow

I decided tonight to take a little time and write this up as opposed to
reading and going to bed like I should. We will see how far I get since I
was up pretty late last night compiling data for some updates to my boss
and for our weekly "sit rep" (situation report).

As of Christmas day, I am the acting camp leader here at the Cape. Our
previous camp leader left on the ship and the next one doesn't come in
until early January, so I get to play the responsible one. It's a little
nerve wracking at times, but it's also a very good experience. Its rare
that they let us lowly contractors be camp leader, so a lot of eyes are on
me and, really, the whole crew. I'm sure we will do fine!

So the weather recently has been… complicated. In one day- ONE DAY- I got
decently sunburnt and had to worry about frostnip (funny name, but it's a
real thing. Its like frostbite lite). Pretty much every day for the past 4
or 5 days has had a mix of beautiful sun, blue sky, light to moderate wind,
and occasional snow flurries that leave visibility at about "I'm pretty
sure I'm walking in the right direction to make it home." On the plus side
of things, the tides have been extremely low around midday for the past
week (thank you full moon that I'm informed is somewhere up there), which
makes getting around easier because instead of sinking up to your knees in
the snow every step you take and then having to slowly walk/ wade through
the snow and slush mixture that you are pretty sure has to get better in a
few steps but actually seems to give into that belief, you can just walk in
the intertidal.

There is nothing more pathetic and disheartening than being on a nice dry
patch of land, seeing your next dry patch maybe 20 feet away, and just
watching your feet and knees disappear as you try to take as few steps as
possible to cover the great crevice-like expanse that in reality is a small
stream melting out under a couple feet of snow.

In other news, we also completed our cape-wide fur seal pup census this
weekend. Being paid to spend all day hiking around looking for baby fur
seals is not the worst job in the world by any means. That being said, it
was a little depressing because our numbers are down significantly from
last year. About 20% down. We did expect about a 10% decrease because
that's just what has been happening to the population for the past decade.
However, doubling that is a bit disheartening. Luckily though, the pups
that are here appear to be bigger overall and growing fast than in the past
2 years, which is a good sign!

Also in good news, at least for now, is that we are only just starting to
get leopard seals trickling in. That's not to say they wont show up in
greater numbers soon, but every extra day the pups get to grow bigger,
faster, and smarter might give them an extra fighting chance. If nothing
else, if the pups are bigger when they are eaten, then maybe the leopards
will only need 3 or 4 to feel full instead of 5 or 6, allowing more pups to
survive! Silver lining?

We ate lots of food for Christmas and are still working on leftovers
tonight (turkey enchiladas!). No big plans for new years really other than
staying up. Now that solstice is behind us the daylight is slipping away!
We are down to only about 20 hours now! And the dusk/dawn that is night
feels just that much darker! In reality it will be a while before we need
flashlights to walk around outside at night, but its fun to pretend like
these are "real world" problems. Despite the snow flurries this is my 4th
consecutive summer with no true winters in between (bouncing between
hemispheres has its perks).

Happy Holidays

Hi all,
I know its been a while and I apologize for that. Things have slowed down a
little here (thankfully), but we still are busy doing a variety of things.
Luckily though, it is Christmas and we will all be helping to make tons of
food (much like Thanksgiving), swapping little gifts, and working only a
half day or two.

We actually have the ship due to arrive on Christmas Day to pick up our
current camp leader and take him back to Punta Arenas, so we are doing our
Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve. Our next camp leader comes in in
early January with the resupply ship (same ship but its on its way out of
the Antarctic now and has to go pick up our fresh food and everything). In
the interim, I will actually be acting camp leader, which is a little
terrifying but also a really great resume builder/ experience for me. I'm
still debating whether to call myself camp leader or expedition leader...
hmm...

In other news the weather had been amazing for a couple days with temps all
the way up into the 40s! It was actually too hot and I was overheating, but
in a good way. Plus there was sun and little wind and playful puppies-
doesn't get much better than that. Unfortunately tonight it decided to
change that. The forecast predicted about 5 mph out of the east. It is
currently blowing 45 with some gusts in the high 50s. So you were close
forecast, but not quite there. We will see what tomorrow brings. Hopefully
it does not impact the boat schedule and Doug is able to get out fine.

Our fresh food is pretty much down to the hardiest of vegetables. We have
lots of canned and frozen goods though so we will persevere. I made a huge
batch of mac n cheese the other night that we ate the following night as
well and still have some left over for lunches. Portion control is not my
speciality.

The fur seal pups are getting bigger and just starting to really become
playful and curious. I think I have the more stubborn defensive beaches
unfortunately where pups are less likely to approach you, but I'm working
on winning them over none-the-less. I've had a few chew on my backpack, my
skipole, my fingers, whatever they can get their little mouths on. I did
unfortunately witness our first leopard seal attack of the season, but so
far we have only really seen 1 or 2 leopards in the area so the pups have
been safe.

Penguin chicks are just starting to hatch out, which will lead to some
hilarity out in the penguin mines. Fuzzy pears with beaks and noodle-like
flippers pretty much speaks for itself.

We still have a lot of ice around the cape in the form of various sized
icebergs. Every once in a while one will get smashed apart by the reefs and
waves and fill a beach or cove with basketball sized blocks of ice. Its
pretty amazing considering last year if we saw just ONE or TWO icebergs we
got excited. It really makes you feel like you are actually in the
Antarctic and that that is NOT normal for most people.

OK thats all for now. I hope everyone has a good holiday and gets to relax
a little. I dont know if anyone is still reading these posts really, but it
is nice to think someone is listening. And Yoshi, thank you for keeping my
mom informed of what I am doing by keeping up with this!

The photo by the way is a female young adult Weddell Seal lounging and
enjoying life on the Cape!

Full Swing

It feels like it's been a while since I updated this. In reality, it's only
been about a week. However, a lot has happened in that week. We've
officially gone from very slow with only occasional action to all action
and pretty much no slow.

As I mentioned last week, we've started perinatal captures, which really
are the heart of the pinniped program for the AMLR program (see links for
what that is if you don't know already). Our mandate is to track trip
durations and dive behavior for 30 female fur seals and to track the growth
and survival of their pups. In recent years, we have upped it to 32 females
because we lose so many pups these days we just could not get enough data
to show anything really.

These 32 captures all take place around the peak of pupping, which often is
around Dec 7-9, but this year we think is later. Apparently South Georgia
island, where a TON of fur seals breed, is also experiencing a delay. It
still means doing all these captures typically over about a 2 week span.
That's 14 days to do 32 captures, which isn't terrible in the grand scheme
of things, but when you start adding in crappy weather days, phocid and
other survey protocols, oh and just general having other things like
cooking and cleaning and showering, it means you stay very busy.

Today (Tuesday) I took my first shower since last Saturday. That's Saturday
November 28… So, officially first shower of December! I got the mixture of
boiling and ice cold water just right this time around too so it was pretty
amazing. I definitely needed it. I've been up until nearly 1am the last few
nights entering and reviewing data, prepping capture gear, and setting up
instruments (time-depth recorders) for fur seals. These days its pretty
much non-stop work from about 9am until at least 11pm, often longer. I
managed to sneak in the shower today because everyone just tried to get
moving early and worked extra fast throughout the day.

I did get to do some laundry yesterday, but really that just meant quickly
washing my long underwear tops and bottoms (we use a bucket with hot water
and a plunger type deal), rinsing them, wringing them out with our fancy
old-school clothes wringer, dumping all the left over water back in the
original bucket (now mostly a light brown color), then throwing most of my
dirty socks into said bucket and letting them soak all afternoon. I say
most because I had to make sure I would have a few dry socks to wear over
the next couple days. I'm not sure if the socks actually got "cleaned" at
all or if I just redistributed the dirt and grime, but I threw some
peppermint scented body wash in there with them and now they smell lightly
of peppermint, so I am pretty pleased about that. I will probably do a more
thorough cleaning once perinatals end. We will still be plenty busy, but it
wont be quite the same organized chaos.

And just to give you an idea of why its so busy, I'll explain the day a
little more. Everyday after breakfast we (the pinniped team) go out and do
our resights just to see who is on the beaches and who has pups. This is
part of our season-long monitoring, but also helps us decide who to capture
on any given day. After resights its usually a quick lunch and then
prepping for the captures. This year one of my goals has been to reorganize
some of the gear, particularly to make it easier for the penguin biologists
who help us by working up the pup while we work on the female (they don't
exactly suffer or complain when we ask them to spend 10 minutes working on
the pup followed by 20 minutes of playing with it and letting it nap in
their laps…). We have also been trying to assimilate more capture
information and behavior data on the females before and after we catch them
to get a better idea of how they react to gas anesthesia and just the
experience overall. This means that once we figure out who we want to go
after, there is a bit of a scramble to look up past data on those animals
and just see what we are working with. It also helps us decide who should
get the time-depth recorders or not.

When the gear has been organized and past data collected, I repack up all
the capture gear, mix bleach for marking pups, heat water for epoxy, load
up my backpack with about 60 lbs of gear and nets, and head to the site.
Once we reach the site, we scout out the target females, determine our best
line of approach, distribute jobs (there is usually one netter, one person
on the pup, and 2-3 people controlling surrounding bull fur seals to make
sure the other 2 don't get bitten), and set up the gear in the best
location available. Recently most of the beaches have been more knee-high
slush than anything, so "best" location becomes a bit relative. Capture
then commence, often with us having to relocate in between. That includes
not only moving my gear, but also moving bamboo bull poles, oxygen tanks,
slings for weighing animals, and a 50+ lbs wood box that we use to let the
females recover from anesthesia in peace.

So if that alone isn't exhausting enough, you then get to haul all the gear
home (at least leaving the boxes and poles at the beach), unpack it all,
clean it up, and set it out to dry because its inevitably going to be wet.
Oh and then you get to also restock everything you just used, which
includes pulling out more sample collecting vials, swabs, bags,
transmitters, etc. You also have to draw up more drugs, prep the next day's
instruments, oh and you now also have a pile of samples from the current
day that need to be processed and put away. Plus there's then all this data
that must be entered into various spreadsheets and the database along with
your other daily data like resights and censuses, which we do everyday on
pups and females to help determine the peak of pupping. Its not just me
doing this work of course, the other pinniped tech helps enormously, but
even then it's a lot of work. Of course every few days one of us also has
to cook dinner and do the dishes for everyone, so that just adds to the
whole process.

Overall, despite the craziness, these captures are pretty amazing. Not only
do we get tons of useful data, we also just get to be hands on and up close
with the animals. When you run your hands through fur seal fur, you
understand immediately why they were hunted so heavily. It also is a time
to test your knowledge and ability to read the animals on the beach. I've
gotten pretty good at predicting how each animal will act, but occasionally
one will surprise you. Its not always good to have a bull suddenly come
charging at you over the helplessly waved bamboo pole to try to steal the
female you are currently moving in a net, but it happens occasionally. The
second you take things for granted or get complacent, something happens to
remind you that these are wild animals. Big, wild animals with minds and
agendas of their own. If nothing else, you get to play find the asshole
bull on the beach. There's always at least one who likes to just cause
trouble.