Tag: weddell seals

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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