As always it has been awhile since my last post. The summer work has been keeping us busy, with additional projects providing new experiences. My boss has been here, living and working with us since the end of October and has just returned to the UK. With him, he brought our new ZFAs. John is my replacement, continuing the seal work for the next 16 months. Tegan is taking over from Tim with the geeps and penguins, and Carrie is following in Lucys footsteps with the big birds. They came in early on the Protector, and were followed a few weeks later by Pete (the tech), and Emily (a PhD student taking samples from seals with us) on the Shack.
We had a very late end to the leopard seal season, with sightings going into November - including many predation events featuring macaronis as prey. Due to this, we spent quite a few days heading over to Big Mac, walking / sliding down through the colony (via the 'motorway' where they don't generally nest, but instead use to get into the colony without too much disruption), and sitting at the bottom where the macs jump out onto the rocks, providing a great spot for leopard seals to float in wait.
 |
| 'Steven Sealberg' kills a macaroni penguin. |
On the 1st of November we started our daily visits to SSB, our study beach for Antarctic fur seals. This increased to twice-daily visits when the first pup was born. As we had 4 pairs of hands this season instead of two we had last year, the sessions went fairly quickly. We did have more work than last year, with multiple projects piggybacking on the normal work. This allowed us to get extra experience in several sampling techniques which is great, and it should provide some interesting data for a few PhD students. The trips to SSB finished 20 days earlier than last year, making it a much shorter season. So myself and John now have a bit more time to prepare for several other aspects of our jobs, and get out on the nicer days to experience other parts of the island that we haven't seen for a few months. In the coming months we'll be heading up into the valleys each day to check on our study females for the attendance project. This is a good excuse to get out and about, taking photos of pups playing in the streams and exploring.
 |
| On top of Tonk on a nice day |
 |
| Gentoo chicks were tiny. They are now almost the size of the adults. |
|
 |
| Grey-headed albatross |
 |
| Antarctic fur seal pup |
 |
| Wandering albatross chick testing its wings in the snow. |
Although it has been a busy yet compacted seal season for us, we have managed to get involved with a few days of bird work. This has included doing burrow searches in transects for white-chinned petrels, and looking for the new cohort of nesting wandering albatross. Now we should have more time to help others out on the nice days, and finish up training and inside tasks on wet ones.
 |
| A youngster swims off SSB. |
