Tag: Montana State University

Seal Blubber and Holiday Runs | Field Diaries – Weddell Seal Team

March 11, 2016 / Allison Cusick

The seventh and final post in the Antarctica: Weddell Seal Team series comes to us from Erika Nunlist.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to read the first post in this series for more background on the project and the team. You can also read the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th posts if you missed them.

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 1 day left to reach their goal!

Ice Livin’

December 6, 2015

As always, work and life down here has been fun filled and fast paced. We had a great Thanksgiving – McMurdo did some fine cooking. I was just as uncomfortably full as ever. I unfortunately do not have any pictures of the meal, but I do have pictures of the Turkey Trot we did earlier in the day!

The Turkey Trot. There were around maybe 100 people that ran it, many of which were dressed up in fun outfits. These pictures are all from a guy name Greg Stone in McMurdo who I actually don’t know but he shared his pictures with everyone in McMurdo. This is a shot of people about a quarter mile from the start.

I think this may be one of the best shots, also by Greg Stone. There were more than one penguin outfits running that day.

Eric and Ross at the finish line. Photo by Greg Stone again.

We only have a handful of days left here in Antarctica and times flyin’. This is one of my favorite ‘working’ photos to date. Terrill and Kaitlin near the end of a work day– I think there was an Adelie that Kaitlin was taking pictures of. My pictures of the Adelie weren’t nearly as good as this one.

After realizing that we have so little time left I have made an effort to take a few more photos of the seals. This is from one evening in the colony just behind camp. This pup is just yawning but he looks pretty fierce!

A sleeping mom. She didn’t give two hoots that I was around taking pictures, obviously.

An adult seal coming up for a breath and thinking about coming out of the water.

Seal pups are little punks. They’re very curious and playful. I find it hilarious watching them entertain themselves and bug their moms. I’ve seen many pups just crawling all over their mom while the mom is trying to sleep. This guy was picking up snow and rolling around with it, dropping it, picking it up again, seemingly very entertained by the snow piece. On another note, apparently seals will eat snow when it is ‘hot’ outside to cool themselves down. With it being up to around 35 degrees in the last couple days, I have definitely witnessed this. I wonder just how much a little bit of snow can cool off such a big mammal though.

With work slowing down a little bit we’ve had time for some sight-seeing. A couple days ago we went to a hut at Cape Evans used for some of the early expeditions of Antarctica.

This hut was built during Robert Scott’s expedition of 1910-1913. It was later used by Ernest Shackelton’s expedition in 1915. During this expedition, their ship the Aurora broke away from its anchor (above) stranding 10 men from the party at this hut for 20 months. Luckily, the hut was well provisioned and the men were eventually rescued. When they were rescued, they left in a hurry. The hut is very well preserved. Touring around the hut is almost eerie with all the objects, pictures, and personal items strewn everywhere as if the men were still living there.

Shovels in the “mud room” of the hut. The handles all looked hand-made and well used.

A big stack of seal blubber. They used blubber as fuel for their stoves. Didn’t really smell even though you might think nearly 100 year old seal blubber might stink.

Wheel barrow out in the horse stalls added to the original hut. Yes, they brought horses to Antarctica in one of the early expeditions. I don’t think it worked out too great for the horses.

Apparently they had some time for bicycling? I can say I would be terrified to ride this bike around on the ice down here.

The kitchen. Lots of jars and utensils. They definitely weren’t roughing it. Actually, what I was most surprised with about this hut was how much stuff there was. There had to be hundreds of jars and trinkets. Every corner was riddled with interesting objects.

A note written on the side of R.W. Richards bed. If you can’t read the picture, it says “August 14, 1918, Losses to date: Haywood, Mack, Smith, and Shih” (I can’t really read the last name in the list)

Dead, mummified seal outside the hut.

Cross with Erebus in the background. I’m sure many of the men stranded at this hut for those 20 months did a lot of praying.

We’ve also had the chance to go to the ice edge for some wildlife viewing. Terrill taking pictures with some curious Adelies checking him out.

Rafted ice just beyond the ice edge. I do not know the name of the hill feature in the background. You can tell it was a beautiful day though. The open water in the picture is where penguins have been poking their heads up and swimming around.

Adelies are funny penguins. They act like little grouchy busy-bodies. Very fun to watch.

Close up head shot of an Adelie.

Our camp is being pulled in a day. We will live in McMurdo for the remainder of our time here (we leave on the 14th!). Here’s a couple more photos of camp life before we leave. Toasting bagels in the morning. I had never seen this type of toaster before. It works great!

The variety of shoes we see around camp. Chacos, down booties, and Sorell boots. I usually wear tennis shoes or Haflinger clogs.

Mike’s Chacos have recently been the most appropriate footwear. Around all the doors to our huts where dirt has accumulated the ice has started melting. There are puddles one to two feet deep. This is Mike probing the ice around the step to see where he can safely go for a dry step.

Most of our gear is pretty great, and we make do even when it isn’t. Kaitlin has had to hold her pants up with a carabiner all season. Kind of funny, I’m sure next year she’ll make sure the zippers work on her snow pants! 

Well that’s all I have for this update! Hope you enjoyed! Share these with whoever might be interested and email me if you want my past and/or upcoming updates!

-Erika

This wraps up our first series for Field Diaries – Reflections of Life in the Field.

The inspiration for these series comes from the idea that field diaries, or subjective reflections, are just as informative and useful as objective research field notes and serve as an important avenue in outreach connecting scientists and science to the public.

Please share if you were inspired and thanks for reading!

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Its an Ice Life |Field Diaries – Weddell Seal Team

March 7, 2016 / Allison Cusick

The sixth post in the Antarctica: Weddell Seal Team series comes to us from Erika Nunlist.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to read the first post in this series for more background on the project and the team. You can also read the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th posts if you missed them.

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 4 days left to reach their goal!

The Ice life

November 25, 2015

Life and work are still moving right along down here on the ice. We only have about three weeks left which seems absolutely crazy. I can’t believe it’s been going so fast!

First off, I had a question from someone asking ‘what is the overall objective of this project and how is it going?’ I’ve been caught up in the day-to-day activities so maybe I should take a step back for a second and briefly say a little more about the project as a whole.

The overall objective of this project is to study the long term population trends of Weddell seals. This project has been going on since the 1960’s which presents a unique opportunity to look at multi-generational data on a population of large mammalian carnivores. The oldest seal the project has had so far was 31! She was here last year but didn’t return. I believe the project has documented her with 23 pups, some of which have already had their own pups. She had her first pup in 1990, and only took 1993, 2010 and 2011 from having pups. This is an extreme case though and most of our pup moms are between 10 and 18 years old with many fewer pups to their name. Just an interesting history on an individual to help give you a sense of the information we can get out of the data this project collects!

Our short term or seasonal objective is to work hard, document all the animals in our study area, tag all the pups, and stay happy and healthy!

As our pups get older, they start to molt their ‘lanugo’ fur in favor of their adult pelage. They can have some interesting and comical molt patterns. This guy with his mohawk reminds of some kid out of an inner city punk rock band.

Another photo of the same pup with his mom. Notice her red tags and his yellow temp tag and blue normal tags. Both their tags allow us to document their association. You can also see the pup’s splotchy molting pattern again.

One thing I was surprised with was that the seals have claws. They aren’t very sharp and kind of look like dog claws. What I’ve seen the claws used for is traction on ice and scratching themselves. The molting pups especially scratch themselves a lot. Must be pretty itchy molting all that fur!

I’ve been up in a helicopter two more times recently. Both were attempts to get to an isolated seal colony. One of the flights was abandoned because there was too much wind at our destination, the second attempt was successful. More on that later. Our first flight was commissioned out to the New Zealand base, or the kiwis. This is a photo of the kiwi AStar-B2 helicopter picking us up at our camp.

We had to bail on our first flight out to White Island, where the remote seal colony is, but we did a reconnaissance flight instead. This is a shot of the kiwi base as we flew over. McMurdo is just on the other side of the wind turbines you can see in the top right.

Sea ice and multi-year ice can be under a lot of pressure and can have some interesting shapes. This is actually a picture of ice on the ice shelf (which is a floating glacier – very different from sea ice) under pressure just outside Scott Base in the shape of large ‘rollers’. I think they look like something you might see in a desert but formed entirely differently.

A view from the helicopter of one of our larger colonies at Hutton Cliffs. We had a lot of pups born here this year. Every other day we walk the entire colony and check every individual. This photo covers around a mile left to right.

Another aerial view of one of our colonies – this one is called North Base.

Mike and I in the kiwi helicopter.

On our second attempt to White Island, we had a AStar-B2 helicopter out of McMurdo. You can see John, our pilot, enjoying himself. Often the pilots just fly and don’t get the opportunity to get out and walk around. He went with us to check out the seals. This picture also shows Mike and Terril putting our gear in the carrying cage.

White Island is unique and very interesting for multiple reasons. First off, it is the most southern mammalian resident population in the world. It is also an isolated population very few individuals – last year our project saw less then 20 seals. This small population was isolated due to an event in the middle of the last century when the ice shelf broke out unusually far allowing a small subset of the seals to be trapped afterwards. The seals themselves didn’t seem to different to me, but apparently (and obviously) they are very inbred. One interesting side-effect apparently might be more female pups born than usual. No clue as to why, but an interesting observation non-the-less.

I’ve had some questions on the weather we experience down here. I have to say, it really hasn’t been that bad. We had some colder, windier days to start the season off but since then we’ve had a lot of beautiful days. Recently, the temperature has been steadily climbing. Lately it’s been in the low 20’s which is warmer than places in the states! James told me it was around -10 degrees F in couple nights ago in the Centennial Valley which was about 30 degrees colder than it was here when we were talking. This is a photo of one day that the weather wasn’t good enough to work in. It was snowy, windy, and low visibility.

Later that same day we hadn’t been able to work, it cleared up into beautiful day. Sound like a familiar weather pattern for any of you living in Montana? We didn’t end up working that day even when it did clear up so we had some free time. Running is another thing that some of us do when we have the energy and time. This is a photo of Kaitlin running back from Little Razorback – around 1.2 miles from camp. Each of those bamboo flags are 50 meters apart for some depth perception. There’s also another out and back that adds up to 3 miles round trip. If you add both out-and-backs you have a nice 5+ mile run.

Terrill and Kaitlin ‘hi-fiving’ in front of camp. They both did the same run but in different directions. Good way to blow off some steam and enjoy Antarctica when you’re not working! Our crew plans on doing the Turkey Trot for Thanksgiving in a few days, excited for that!

We routinely drive our sleds around on rough terrain. Because of this, we have had multiple sleds break down on us. Mostly its our suspension systems breaking because of all the ‘streugy’ (rough icy molgul features on the ice) we drive over. When a sled does break, it’s a pretty painless routine. We put the sled on one of our siglands and tow it with another sled back to McMurdo. In McMurdo we have great mechanics that seem to be able to fix anything. Usually we’ll have our sleds back in a day or two depending on their work load. These are pictures of one of the broken down sled scenario.

Mike getting the gear together in the morning.

Eric on a survey of another colony we call South Base.

Blueberry peach pie from scratch with our event number. Pretty tasty!

No rolling pins around here, had to make due with a Coors Light can. Worked out great! Photo by Ross.

Our first adelie penguin! We haven’t had any more emperors lately, but we have had loner adelies run through camp, yes literally run. They are just as curious as the emperors but less comfortable hanging around.

One afternoon when we finished work early we went to check out a snow cave about 10 minutes away from camp. Here’s Ross with sunglasses and a headlamp – an unusual combination around here!

Mike entering the snow cave.

Inside the snow cave. Photo by Ross.

Icicles in the snow cave.

B-009. First time fooling around with light painting. Cursive by Kaitlin with a headlamp!

Kaitlin and Mike in another, shallower, snow cave (thus the brighter blue background).

Looking up into a crevasse. So beautiful!

Hope everyone enjoyed the update!

-Erika

Thanks for reading!

Stay tuned for the seventh and last post in the series, coming tomorrow!

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 4 days left to reach their goal!
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A Typical Weddell Work Day in Antarctica |Field Diaries – Weddell Seal Team

March 5, 2016 / Allison Cusick

The fifth post in the Antarctica: Weddell Seal Team series comes to us from Erika Nunlist.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to read the first post in this series for more background on the project and the team. You can also read the 2nd, 3rd and 4th posts if you missed them.

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 5 days left to reach their goal!

A typical work day

9 November 2015

The last couple weeks have been very busy, very awesome, and very fun! We had our two PI’s, Bob Garrott and Jay Rotella join us for the last 16 days. They are both professors and Montana State University and have been running this project for the last 15 years. While they were here, they worked every day out in the field with us and helped us set a new record on the number of pups tagged in the study area! We’ve now tagged around 630 pups with a few (maybe 10-20) to go. The most we tagged in a day was around 60 I believe.

While they were here, we also did our first survey of the entire study area. Our work so far has been focused on the main colonies where we know the majority of pups are born. The purpose of a survey day is to see where else the seals are in the study area and capture the distribution of the animals we generally aren’t as focused on (i.e. the single males and females). To do a survey, we drive around and make a note of every seal we see in the entire study area which has come to about 1500 animals this year (this number will continue to increase throughout the season).

I know many people are interested in exactly what we’ve been doing on a daily basis for work. So for this update I’m going to detail, step by step, a typical day as best I can. I must admit, I haven’t been great about pictures so many of the work photos in particular were taken by Ross Hinderer. Thanks Ross!

Our day begins in the gear hut where we keep and dry out all our seal covered gear.

Every morning we have to pack up our tools and organize them in our tagging harnesses. In each tagging harness we have two tagging pliers, a pair of nippers, a genetic sampler, a hole punch, a third tagging plier, and a brush. We also have our data book, field computer, several strands of tags, and vials to hold our genetic samples.

Tools in the tagging harness. One person will often wear this all day and have easy access to the tools.

In a separate pack we also pack materials to weigh our pups. This includes a scale and weigh bag (specialized duffel bag designed by Bob) which come in three sizes to use as the pups grow. The scale connects to the weigh bar and also to the weigh bag. Two people then stand on opposite sides of the bar and lift the pup together. We weigh pups at parturition, 20 days old, and 35 days old. Pups are born at about 60-80 pounds and can gain 2-6 pounds a day. We’ve started weighing 20 day old pups recently and they seem to average around 140-170 pounds. The heaviest 20 day pup so far has been 208 pounds. Building some good leg muscles! Can’t wait for those 35-dayers!

Additional gear we bring each day is photo bars (I’ll explain later), lunch stuff (ramen, hot water, cocoa, tea, etc.), a handful of flags, and survival bags (the red water proof bag – mandatory to have enough survival gear for each person).

When we’ve gotten all our gear together in the huts, we have to uncover our sleds, load all the gear onto the sleds, start our sleds, gear ourselves up, put on helmets and finally take off. Writing it all out makes me realize actually how much work we have to do every morning before actually going to work. With our whole crew working on it though, it really goes pretty quickly. This is a photo of penguins hanging out watching us get ready one morning. There were completely unaffected by all the hustle and bustle.

Once we get to a colony, we usually split up into groups and start working up the colony. Each group usually has their own set of tagging, weighing, and photo gear. We then go to every seal in the colony to check if there’s a pup that needs tagging or weighing. This is the normal looking scene at one of our colonies. You can see about how seals are distributed throughout the colony and another group working up seals in the background. These seals are all here because of sea ice cracks that allow them to get in and out of the water from holes they rake out with their teeth. Most of these cracks are very obvious and easy to cross but if they aren’t we have probing poles we take with us to help navigate.

Exploring part of our study area with the probing poles. This is an area with many cracks covered in snow that we don’t go to often because there really aren’t more than a handful of seals.

When we do find a mom and newborn pup it looks something like this. In this picture, Mike and I had walked up to this mom and pup pair, noticed the pup did not have tags yet so we copied down the mom’s tags and retreated to get the tagging stuff ready. At this point, we prepare two sets of tags (one pair for each flipper), write down the mom and pup information in our book, and get the weighing stuff ready. An important note, not every single of the 600-odd pups this year were weighed. That would be a ton of work. Instead, we enrolled certain pups in this particular part of the study depending on the mom’s age and history in the project. In the end, we enrolled about 180 pups in the weigh study each of which will ideally be weighed three times. Most of those pups were also enrolled in the swim study which just means we’ll take the temp tag (also explained later) off of them when we’ve weighed them for the last time. Photo by Ross.

A closer view of me writing down information in the tagging book. I’ve gotten pretty good at writing with gloves on! It’s not easy and my writing I fear is not always 100% legible. On warmer days I wear thinner gloves which makes it a little easier to write. As for entering the data into the computer, we use the butt end of a pencil which works great. After recording the necessary info, we walk up to the seal pup and tag, weigh, sex, and genetic sample the pup. There are several ways to do this and it often depends on the temperament of the mom. Some mom’s really don’t care about your presence and a single person can go up and tag the seal pup all by themselves. Other times the mom really does care and can be quite aggressive. In these instances, two or three people work together to get the pup tagged. One person tags while the other two either help drag the seal pup a short distance away or distract mom or both. Photo by Ross.

An example of a very peaceful mom and pup pair.

We always tag the outer webs on each flipper and the end product looks something like this. Sometimes we also will put a temporary third temperature recording tag in one of the inner webs. Next photo.

We call the temperature recoding tags ‘temp tags.’ The pups will wear them for about 35 days before we take them off again. The idea behind these tags is that air temperature and water temperature are different so by looking at the temperature record logged in these small devices, you can see that difference and figure out how much time pups spend in the water.

In this photo, you can kind of see the two blue normal tags and the yellow temp tag. This is a fun photo because it’s a pup that has actually been swimming. You can tell it’s freshly wet and the mom is still in the water. Photo by Ross.

Beside weighing and tagging, the last integral part of our day to day work is doing photo projects on moms with pups that we’ve chosen to weigh. A photo project entails setting up six bars (like I’m doing in the photo) evenly around the seal mom and taking photos from 8 different angles with the seal and bars in the frame. The photos are then put into a program (by Kaitlin) that can calculate the volume of the seal by referencing the bars (which are a meter long and different colors every 20 cm) and then the weight can be derived using a standard density. This may sound easy enough to do, but it is one of the hardest parts of the job. We have to make sure the seal mom stays still (very hard when she wants to watch you) and take good photos with cold hands, blowing winds, a moving pup, etc. It’s not thaaatttt hard but can be very frustrating. Photo by Ross.

So why do a photo project? This is a relatively new aspect of the project and it’s an attempt to get at how much these mom’s weigh without actually having to weigh them on a scale. We do have a weigh sled (photo) that we can weigh mom’s on, but it can’t go to all our colonies (because of rough ice) and mom’s are often very hard to coax onto the sled (we use their pups at motivation to get on the sled). We did weigh about 30 moms on the sled this year, but we got maybe 70 photo projects. So if the photo projects do work, you can see just in numbers that it would be potentially a better option. Of the mom’s we got on the sled, weights ranged from roughly 900-1100 pounds.

At the end of each day, we refuel our sleds, unpack all our gear, and cover our sleds. We fuel our sleds with a premixed fuel that is 50 gallons of gas and 5 gallons of oil per barrel. Antarctica primarily runs on fuel (some solar too) but if you calculate in the amount of effort and resources it takes to get the fuel here, fuel works out to be about $34.00 a gallon. We go through a barrel about every 5 days.

And that’s it for this this update. I have another one coming very shortly because I actually split this one in half. Hope you enjoyed and hopefully it wasn’t too much writing. The next one will be many more pictures and a lot less writing… I think.

Again, feel free to share with others and send me an email if you want me to add you to my list.

-Erika

Thanks for reading!

Stay tuned for the sixth post in the series, coming tomorrow!

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 5 days left to reach their goal!
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Camp Life in Antarctica| Field Diaries – Weddell Seal Team

March 4, 2016 / Allison Cusick

The fourth post in the Antarctica: Weddell Seal Team series comes to us from Erika Nunlist.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to read the first post in this series for more background on the project and the team. You can also read the 2nd and 3rd posts if you missed them.

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 7 days left to reach their goal!

B-009, Permit number: 2013-007, NSF, Antarctica

Settling In

October 26, 2015

We’ve been very busy the last couple weeks settling into camp and field work. Sorry to keep people waiting for this update! A lot has happened over the last weeks so hopefully my pictures and comments will highlight some of it for you.

Our camp and snowmobiles in some nice evening light. The dark feature in the back is called Big Razorback, it’s an island and part of the Dellbridge Islands in McMurdo Sound that make up a caldera from a historical volcanic explosion. I have a map later and will elaborate on the geography, etc.

I’m sure people are curious about what and how we eat down here. For the most part we eat very normally besides having fresh fruit or vegetables. We cook on two Coleman, two burner stoves or the grill. Breakfast for me is usually yogurt and granola or toast. Lunch is usually a brownie and a bumper bar – a bumper bar is kind of like a cliff bar but way better. We also don’t have any fresh dairy products (except for cheese and butter) so the yogurt is actually a powdered greek yogurt that you mix with water and let sit for about 8 hours. It’s pretty good and I have to admit, I didn’t even know powdered yogurt existed! The picture above is of steaks thawing out on our wash water. The two drums are sitting on our propane heater because the source of this water is actually an ice burg about a half mile from camp. We’re constantly adding ice to these drums, letting in melt, using it, and repeat. Pretty good system!

Below is a picture of Terrill grilling steaks on our camp grill. Apparently this is one of the only field issued grills in Antarctica. It works great and is awesome to have! We’ve cooked everything from chorizo sausage, to pork loins, to halibut, to chicken, and steak on the grill so far.

Collecting ice burg chunks for our wash water with ice axes, our siglin sled, and skidoos. This much ice will probably last us a little more than a week. Mike, Eric, and Me from left. Photo by Ross.

A big part of our initial work was flagging roads to our seal colonies. We flag them not only to navigate the cracks around here safely but also in case of ground blizzards. We drill holes in the ice (me on the left) every 50 meters and then stick a bamboo rod with a flag on the end in the hole (Mike on the right). The worst weather I’ve been out in so far was up against Mt. Erebus (the big one by Mike’s flag) where we could barely see the next flag. At some points we’d have to stop and wait to see the next flag and then quickly gun it to the flag before stopping and waiting until we saw the next one. Photo by Ross.

This is where I sleep. There are two sleeping huts at camp. This one has three beds and the other one has four. I share this hut with Katie and Terrill. We have a propane heater in the back right that hooks up to two 100lb propane tanks at a time. We have to switch these tanks about once a week. These huts stay very warm and the beds are very comfortable. We also cover the windows with boards so the huts stay nice and dark despite the nearly 24-hrs of daylight we have. No trouble sleeping for me!

Inside the outhouse. The seat on the left is for ladies – the urine funnels into a tin can that we then have to remove each time and dump down the urinal – upper right in the photo – which then drains into large 50 gallon waste water drums outside of the hut. When the drums are full they get sent back to McMurdo and eventually off the continent. The seat on the right is for pooping only. There is a 5 gallon bucket under the seat. After we go, put a piece of cardboard on top of our doo so it’s more pleasant for the next person. When these buckets full, we change them out and they are also eventually shipped off the continent. This is not a heated hut so everything freezes and it really doesn’t smell too bad at all. Notice the blue foam insulating the seats – a very important detail so the seats are never too cold.

And another essential part of camp, it turns out, has been emperor penguin visitors. These guys are very curious creatures and will walk miles to check something out. In this case, I’m guessing they walked at least 5 miles to check out Big Razorback and our huts. They waddle around, making squawking noises and slowly shuffle on only to come back through around 3am to wake everyone up in camp.

This is one of the bigger groups we’ve had. Apparently these are groups of bachelor penguins – looking for the ladies maybe? Or just confused? Still haven’t figured it out.

Emperor penguins from a distance look pretty simple, but when you get up close the designs they have in their feathers are intricate and beautiful. In this picture and the following picture notice how the males are bowing their heads to each other. I haven’t researched what this means but I’m guessing it might be a display of dominance or some other social behavior. Not sure.

Woke up to this one morning. Pretty interesting to see all the outer penguins laying down with inner ones standing up. Also not sure why they were doing this. Very cool though.

One morning of work consisted of getting into a helicopter and flying around our study area to look at our seal colonies and the crack system on the ice. We flew in a Bell 212 that picked us up right out of camp. The flight was about half hour or 45 minutes. It was an awesome first helicopter flight!! Went by too quickly.

Ross and Terrill during the flight.

Kaitlin and I during the flight.

The Bell 212

A photo of the ice edge and the Dellbridge Islands/caldera I mentioned earlier from the helicopter.

The following map is a quick one I made to illustrate where we are and where we work a little more.

A photo of our crew that Alasdair took a day that he came out with us to photograph our work.

There have been a couple days that we haven’t been able to work due to bad weather. One of these days the winds picked up so much that our huts were actually moved. Notice how hut 13 has been slammed into hut 18? Mind you, hut 13 is probably about 10,000lbs. The winds gust to move that had to have been at least 120-150 mph. Everyone was fine, and our camp is now put back together.

Another picture of our huts and how 13 moved. You can see where it was, parallel to the kitchen hut on the far right.

Besides our huts moving, our outhouse also got blown away. You can barely see it in the distance, about 500 m away. There were four ice anchors holding the outhouse down and four ice screws also in place on each side to minimize movement. Regardless, the cords holding the outhouse down (at about 4,000lb test) broke and the outhouse blew away. We also have that back and secured even better than before.

Eric and I during one of our earlier work days surveying the southern end of study area. We went to the ice edge this particular day to check out a whole bunch of juvenile seals rumored to be there. The open water is in the background along with a seal. I haven’t been enjoying myself at all by the way, no fun at all down here as you can tell by the pictures. 😉 Photo by Ross.

And, last but not least, a seal pup!! I’ve been working so hard on tagging them and getting to the next pup, I’ve hardly taken any pictures. Managed to get this one before my camera died. My next update (don’t expect it very soon, we’re going to be incredibly busy for the next several weeks) will illustrate in much more detail exactly what we’re doing with the seals and why. Along with anything else people are maybe curious about! Let me know!

Hope everyone enjoyed and I hope it wasn’t too long!

-Erika

Thanks for reading!

Stay tuned for the fifth post in the series, coming tomorrow!

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 7 days left to reach their goal!
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Prepping for the Ice and Seals |Field Diaries – Weddell Seal Team

March 2, 2016 / Allison Cusick

The third post in the Antarctica: Weddell Seal Team series comes to us from Erika Nunlist.

Be sure to read the first post in this series for more background on the project and the team. Here is the 2nd post if you want to read that too!

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 8 days left to reach their goal!

October 8, 2015

Getting out onto the ice

We’ve been very busy the last week in McMurdo getting everything ready for the season. Lots of errands, lots of trainings, lots of talking to people, and a lot of new experiences. Still can’t believe I’m down here, it’s been incredible so far and we haven’t even started field work! I’ll let the following pictures detail some of the stuff we’ve been up too…

Making tags for the seals in the work shop of the Crary building (the main science building). Each seal gets two sets of tags (one on each flipper making a grand total of 4 tags per seal). We made 1000 sets of tags for the seals we’ll tag this year. Took about 8-10 hours total with all of us working.

The carts around the Crary lab have old license plates on them, thought it was kind of fun. Lots of Montanans down here, haven’t met anyone from Wyoming yet though.

Our first several days were windy and cold. Probably down to -20 or so at least and even colder with wind chill. It’s been nicer lately though sunny and in the low teens.

Errands in town. Piston bullys on the right- one of the vehicles we will use to get some of our stuff out to camp.

A lot of our gear is from the Berg Field Center (BFC). This is one of our trips there getting an assortment of things from back packs to kitchen supplies to sleeping bags, etc. Eric and Terrill in this photo… I think Terrill is still the head honcho of the show?? (Eric is holding a bat that Alasdair gave us, joking that it was a seal club)

Our lab in the Crary building. Lots going on, lots of stuff. Our staging area between our sleds and rooms where we get geared up and ready to go.

We got trained on driving piston bullys (three pictures previous). Ross and Mike enjoying the ride while Eric drove.

Some fun artwork in the BFC.

Getting our food for the next month or so. We essentially walked down these rows and pulled all of the food we need/want. Like grocery shopping but then not really having to pay for it. A fun group activity, learned a lot about each others food preferences.

Alasdair helping us get our frozen foods. And us maybe helping him get some bacon? …hmmm J He’s been a great guy to get to know, one of the top guys around McMurdo currently on ice knowledge. We’ve had some beers and good chats with him. He’s also a great photographer. I think he’s going to be doing some kind of documentary down here next year.

Our kitchen hut full of food from our food pulls. Lots and lots of food. We won’t be going hungry!

Terrill happy about getting onto the ice. Essentially sums up the rest of the crews feeling about it as well… !!

My sled. Super G. It’s super great. And my personalized helmet. Someone glued a knit hat on my helmet before I got it – I’m hoping it’ll keep my head warmer.

Down at the ‘transition’ where all the sleds are parked. The red sled to the right is called a siglin sled. We tow three of these around with our emergency survival gear (the red water proof bag on the end) and an assortment of other gear including shovels, ice drills, and bamboo flags for making our ‘roads’.

Seals!! We’ve been out to see our first seals. Haven’t done any tagging or work on them yet, but it has been super cool to actually see them. The whole reason we’re here in the first place.

Cute/funny/BIG creatures. This lady is probably about a thousand pounds or so.

If you look closely at the base of the hills in this picture, you’ll see a mirage. It’s called Fata Morgana and is regularly seen around here. Not sure exactly why it occurs, but I think it’s something to do with differences of air temperatures and bending of light.

A Caterpillar Challenger towing out our four gear huts, fuel, propane, and bathroom (the Center of Excellence). Our camp is about 12 miles out of McMurdo to the north.

A closer shot of the Challenger and our gear.

Our huts and home for the next couple months. The two huts in the middle are our sleeping huts. The 05 on the left is the kitchen hut and the 11 on the right is our gear huts. Can’t wait to move in! We’ll probably move in tomorrow- hopefully! Next update will include more pictures of camp life!

Thanks for reading!

Stay tuned for the fourth post in the series, coming tomorrow!

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 8 days left to reach their goal!
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Flight to Antarctica | Field Diaries – Weddell Seal Team

March 1, 2016 / Allison Cusick

The second post in the Antarctica: Weddell Seal Team series comes to us from Erika Nunlist.

Erika graduated in 2015 from Montana State University with a B.S. in Conservation Biology & Ecology and a Minor in GIS. She has worked as a wildlife technician on Sandhill cranes, Long-billed curlews, small mammals, mountain goats, and sage grouse and is exceptionally excited for her first year on ‘the ice’ researching Weddell seals.

Be sure to read the first post in this series for more background on the project and the team.

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 9 days left to reach their goal!

B-009, Permit number: 2013-007, NSF, Antarctica

Made it!

October 1, 2015

Well, this is my attempt to keep people updated on my time in Antarctica. No promises on the frequency of these updates, but I will try my hardest to produce something like this regularly for the next several months. As some of you may know, writing is not my most favorite hobby in the world so I’ll probably rely heavily on photos with some sort of brief explanation. Sorry for any grammatical errors, making this one (and the ones to follow) a quickie.

First off, I made it! I am writing this right now from my dorm room in McMurdo, Antarctica. It feels so good to finally be here after so many months and hours of waiting and preparing. I can tell you now though that it was absolutely worth it. I have been here now for one and a half days, and the whole time I’ve just been kind of amazed. I’ve been amazed for multiple reasons. For starters, the amount of effort it is to get here! It took 30+ hours of (smooth) travel to get to Christchurch, New Zealand from Jackson, WY. In Christchurch we had several trainings, we got all our gear (coats, gloves, jackets, goggles, boots, snow pants, etc.) issued to us, we had to pack and repack all our belongings, and finally hurry up and wait for our opportunity to fly to the ice. The weather in McMurdo has been pretty bad with only patches here and there good enough for a plane to fly in. Luckily, we only had to wait one extra day before our opportunity presented itself. Everyone was very skeptical that we might have a “boomerang” which is when you fly partly or even mostly to McMurdo and then have to turn around and fly right back where you came from because of bad weather. It takes about 5 hours one way in the C17 we were taking, so we essentially prepared to be on the plane for 10-12 hours. Thankfully, we arrived with absolutely gorgeous conditions. It was clear, around -20 degrees, with an alpenglow feel to the whole landscape (we got in around 8:30pm). Stunning. I’m going to describe a little more in detail the phases of our trip all the way to McMurdo with the following pictures.

But.. One last thing before the pictures though! I must mention the 5 other people I’m down here with. They are all great people and I look forward to working with all of them. We have a solid crew, and I have no doubt it’s going to be a very good season for the B-009 seal crew (that’s our event number, biology 009 – this project has been going for around 40 years and the event numbers are now in the 400’s I believe – just a fact to put into perspective how long-lived this project is).

First there’s Terrill, he’s the PhD student, the head guy, I believe it’s his 3rd season down here. He just had a son, Fox, this summer. Then there’s Katie, she’s the new masters student on the project and her second year down here. I kind of knew her in Bozeman a bit, but not too much. She’s a big runner, very very nice, and a person I will definitely get along with. Eric is another returning tech from last year. He’s from Columbia Falls, always smiling, fun to have around. He worked on grizzlies in Yellowstone this summer. We also have a recently graduated master’s student, Ross. He just graduated from MSU and did his research on amphibians. Last is Mike he’s from Great Falls and the only one I hadn’t previously met out of the bunch, also a very nice and solid person to have around.

After going to security for the last time, we got on buses that took us to the airport and the C17 we were scheduled to fly that afternoon. All in good humor, ready to leave Christchurch. From left, Ross, Terrill, Katie, Eric)

The inside of the C17. Essentially looked like a gutted out commercial plane or something. Very spacious and very cool to see all the guts of the plane. Notice everyone’s red jackets and bunny boots (the white ones, yes that’s what they’re called). Partly required to have all the warm clothing in case of emergency but also nice to have when get off the plane in sub-zero temperatures. (Eric on the front left, Ross on the front right with Katie sitting next to him in the maroon shirt)

All out baggage and extra cargo wrapped up and strapped down in the rear of the plane. My two colleagues Mike and Eric.

One of the nice things about flying with the U.S. Airforce was the relaxed rule on the plane. We could walk around as much as we wanted, lay on the floor, or go up into the cockpit and talk to the pilots! The plane was on auto or something and these guys were very relaxed. I talked with them for 5-10 minutes or so. Really cool!

One of the copilots. This is the guy that helped land us on the ice. His first time doing so, it was a very smooth landing!

A sneak preview of Antarctica through one of the four volley ball sized windows on the plane. I was getting very excited at this point. Notice how gorgeous the weather was? Before and after this evening was and has been snowy with very limited view.

And another window shot.

Getting off the C17 after our 5 hour flight from Christchurch. Don’t think we could’ve gotten a more perfect evening to arrive to.

Everyone geared up and headed to the ‘Kress’ a very slow caterpillar bus thing that then transported us to McMurdo at about 10 miles an hours (if that)- it took about 45 minutes to get there.

Everyone squeezed together for the final leg to McMurdo!

So, you can see it was been a very exciting and interesting (and long) journey to finally get here! It feels so good to be here and I can’t wait for everything else that lies ahead.

For now, we’ll be in McMurdo for at least the next week organizing, training, preparing, etc. I’ve already had about 14 hours of training on everything from recycling (McMurdo recycles around 65% of its waste, impressive), to general safety, to light weight vehicle training, to sea ice training and survival training. I still have to do at least 4 or 5 more courses. That’s another thing that has continually impressed me: the shear amount of effort, time, and organization that has gone into having every single person here. It’s really very incredible.

I’ve also been amazed by the infrastructure here. There are a lot of buildings here, and they are all in good shape, well maintained, clean, warm, etc. I don’t know what I was expecting but this place is definitely not primitive. I just took a shower and it was just like at home. Absolutely no different except that it’s in a dorm room situation.

Last note, I must comment on the people here. I’m excited to be around so many interesting people who I feel have a lot to offer. We’ll be very busy this season, so hopefully I’ll have time to chat with some of these folks and see what they have to offer.

That’s all I have for now. Hopefully you enjoyed.

-Erika Nunlist

Thanks for reading!

Stay tuned for the third post in the series, coming tomorrow!

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 9 days left to reach their goal!
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Seal Team Kickoff | Field Diaries – Weddell Seal Team

February 29, 2016 / Allison Cusick

Welcome to Field Diaries – Reflections of Life in the Field

Field diaries, or subjective reflections, are just as informative and useful as objective research field notes and serve as an important avenue in outreach connecting scientists and science to the public.

This week Woman Scientist is featuring anecdotes about field life from the perspectives of Kaitlin Macdonald and Erika Nunlist, two team members with the Weddell Seal Population Study (2015) based out of Erebus Bay, Antarctica.

Kaitlin Macdonald is a current M.S. student at Montana State University and has worked on research projects since 2012. She joined the Weddell seal project in 2014 and is now in her 2nd year being advised by Jay Rotella, Robert Garrott and the project’s co-leader with Terrill Paterson for the field crew. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies, a B.S. in Economics and has also done field work with mountain ungulates and small mammals..

Erika Nunlist graduated in 2015 from Montana State University with a B.S. in Conservation Biology & Ecology and a Minor in GIS. She has worked as a wildlife technician on Sandhill cranes, Long-billed curlews, small mammals, mountain goats, and sage grouse and is exceptionally excited for her first year on ‘the ice’ researching Weddell seals.

The Ross Sea is one of the few pristine marine environments remaining on this planet. One of the most productive areas of the Southern Ocean is located in Erebus Bay and hosts the most southernly population of breeding mammals in the world, the Weddell seal. Over 20,586 marked individuals have been intensively studied since 1968 and provide an excellent opportunity to study the links between environmental conditions and demographic processes in the Antarctic.

The Weddell Seal Field Team has a huge job during the busy pupping season. Crew members work long days, traveling far and wide over the sea ice looking for seals. Researchers tag, weigh and re-weigh pups and adult seals as well as take genetic samples for analysis back in the lab.

To put the season in perspective here are a few statistics from Kaitlin:

Set 18 miles of flagged road on the sea ice.

Tagged over 650 Weddell seal pups in our study area.

Tagged 6 pups at White Island.

Enrolled 173 pups in the mass study.

Weighed a total of 69,708 lbs. worth of pups.

Deployed and collected 122 temperature logging tags.

Counted 1,444 tagged animals in our largest survey.

Have photogrammetry mass assessment projects for
40 Weddell females.

Luckily for us, the scientists sneak extra time out of their busy day to capture photographs and videos which document the research and their experiences.

We begin this Field Diaries Series 1 with an entry from Kaitlin Macdonald.

Enjoy!

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 10 days left to reach their goal!

Dec. 8, 2015

Howdy!

Well this is my first and probably only update from Antarctica. We have had a hell of a season so far and we still have a week left. I had the honor of helping the PhD student on the project Terrill lead the best Antarctic crew to date. Photo courtesy of our advisor Jay who came down with the other PI on the project Bob to help us tag pups for a few weeks.

I guess we will start at the beginning. We were pretty lucky with flights to the ice, we were only delayed 1 day in New Zealand and we arrived on a beautiful clear evening.

We were in McMurdo for the first week going through trainings compiling gear and preparing for our field season. Last year I was in bed well before the sun would dip down to the horizon, this year I was able to see a few sunsets before the sun stopped dropping down to the horizon. Pictured below is the Royal Society Range.

One of our trainings was crevasse rescue. We do this training because we have aggregations of seals on either side of the base of the Erebus Glacier tongue. This is a weird grey area for us to travel in, it’s technically not glacier but it is an area that doesn’t break out with the sea ice resulting in larger cracks and is more prone to calving and ice falls. We do the training as an extra precaution for entering this area. In our training pictured below we had to pull our instructor out of a crevasse he had rappelled into earlier, using a pulley system and snow anchors.

Early in the season there were large congregations of seals at the ice edge. We spent an afternoon surveying these seals to make sure there were not a large number of females with pups we were missing. While we were at the ice edge we saw a storm petrel fishing and a group of emperor penguins swimming along the edge. They look surprisingly like loons in the water.

This year we have seen many more penguins around camp, it seems this might be due to the ice edge being much closer. These guys were walking through camp one evening. We have started seeing snow petrels as well, which is quite exciting considering we didn’t see any last year.

We had such an incredible season. We had a record number of pups born and tagged in our study area. The old record was 608 and I think to date we have tagged 658. It is likely this spike in pup numbers could be a strong cohort of seals reaching reproductive age and having pups of their own. We have also weighed a record number of pups (69,708 lbs) and have had great success taking photos of moms, which is awesome news for my thesis!

During the second half of our season we do surveys of our study area every 5 days. This involves checking tags of every seal you encounter writing them in a field notebook and inputting them in a hand held computer. This is no small feat when you have 1600 seals and 6 people. When you have co-workers like Erika who can survey with a smile it makes the task immensely easier.

The pups are rapidly transitioning from the awkward molting period, which I liken to middle school to fully molted and weaned. The little lady on the right had already made it out to the open water and was lounging in the pack ice.

Speaking of records, we may have come close to breaking a record number of snowmobiles this year. It is nearly unavoidable down here but for some reason welds on the frames and suspension were breaking quite often. When a sled breaks in the field we have to load it onto a Siglin sled and cargo strap it down before pulling it to town. This particular instance we were out of cargo straps and improvised with bungee cords!

We have been very busy wrapping up our season. We visited both colonies on the edge of the Erebus Glacier Tongue one last time to tag any pups we may have missed.

Mandatory glamour shot of the crew!

We also made a helicopter trip out to a population of seals that are trapped at White Island by the Ross Ice Shelf. The ice shelf broke out incredibly far sometime in the 1950’s. The distance from the ice edge to White Island was short enough for seals to colonize the Island. The ice froze again and has never broken out far enough for the seals to survive the swim to open ocean or a breathing hole in the sea ice. This population shows signs of inbreeding and is quite small. We tag animals and take genetic samples at White Island twice a year. We tagged this little guy and 2 other pups, which is a lot of pups for this time of year at White Island.

We have been reminded how soon our season is coming to an end by the rapidly warming temperatures. It has been above 30 degrees for the past week or so, with some days near 40 degrees. While it feels wonderful to only wear a baselayer under our jackets the sun has not been so kind to the sea ice. Slush pools and cracks are growing daily and our camp is slowly sinking into the ice. It isn’t too alarming as the ice is melting from the top so we still have 88 inches before we hit the ocean. It does make navigating camp difficult with calf deep puddles. We set-up a path of wood blocks around camp so you don’t have to risk getting your socks wet anytime you venture out your door. In this picture Eric and Mike are navigating around the largest pool which has formed outside of our gear hut.

Well folks that is all I have for you. Thank you for reading this far, I hope it gave a small glimpse into our lives down here. Our huts are being pulled today and then we spend the rest of the week packing, cleaning and returning our gear before taking off from the ice!

-Kaitlin Macdonald

All photos obtained under B-009, Permit number: 2013-007, NSF, Antarctica

Thanks for reading!

Be sure to catch the second post in our Field Diaries Series, coming tomorrow!

If you would like to help support this project, head on over to their campaign on Experiment! They only have 10 days left to reach their goal!

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