Journals 2004/2005

Barbara Simon-Waters
East Carteret High School, Beaufort, NC

"Foraging ecology of Northern elephant seals" University of California, Santa Cruz July 11-21, 2004

Journal Index: July 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18       19 - 20 - 21

July 16, 2004

Neither Laura nor Carey were at the Long Marine Lab when I arrived this morning but I did run into Joy whose job was to do the 8am feeding of LT and Forrest. I went to the lab to help her. She was relieved because it is somewhat difficult to do the feeding and timing at the same time. We received 2 buckets of herring from the feeding lab. The temperature of the pools was 16.3°C and Lt was being fed 1kg and Forrest 2kg. It took some time to thaw out the fish. We fed the elephant seals at 9:52am. I then went to check Carey's office and she was in. She decided to push back the second feeding to 3pm instead of 2pm. I worked on the website list and found a great website for junior high students on sea otter foraging. Rick Condit from the Smithsonian walked through the lab and I asked about his earlier request for help with his data review. He had mentioned it earlier in the week. Just as he was finishing up his explanations of checking the data, Laura walked in and gave me a packet with a CD of videos of her research and a copy of her PhD proposal. I said good-bye to her as she was leaving for London tomorrow.

I attended Carey's lecture on diving in odontocetes and pinnipeds. It ended about 2:30pm so I went to the lab to start weighing out the fish for the 3pm feeding, 1kg for LT and 3kg for Forrest.

The feeding went well. Forrest eats much more readily than LT. He starts the feeding process more quickly and eats the fish faster. I then went to the lab to work on Rick's data review of elephant seals at Ano Nuevo. Forrest is going to be released there about 4pm on Tuesday. I will leave for San Jose after that. I worked on the data until 5pm, left the lab, and stopped at Subway. I am really beginning to thoroughly enjoy Santa Cruz. Could I live here? Yes! I will meet Carey at the lab about 3:30pm tomorrow to help with the 4pm feeding. Both animals will get 4kg of food and have to be fed in the large pool. A switch must be made then during the feeding.