16 November, 2003

Today was Census number 3. Once again, we split into three groups of two to cover the study area and count our seals. Kelly and I surveyed the southern section, starting at South Base and ending at Scott Base. The biggest surprise of the day was that there were actually seals at Scott Base today. They were on the ice near the trail, lounging near a hole. The morning started out feeling warm, with just a slight breeze and a partial cloud cover. By mid-day the temperature had dropped and the breeze increased enough to make it feel noticeably cooler.

Here's a few seal statistics from today. We counted 890 tagged animals and a total of 936 animals if you include the untagged ones, as well. As of today, we have tagged 363 pups; 18 of these were already dead when they were tagged, and 17 have died since tagging. That translates to around a 90% survival rate for this year's pups. In addition, the curve you get when plotting numbers of pups tagged each day follows closely with the curve from 2001.

The censuses are scheduled every 4 days. That means the next one will be on Thursday. Until then we will spend our time photographing and weighing seals for Darren's project, as well as tagging any new pups that we may see. In addition, we will seek out any seals with broken or missing tags that need re-tagging.

Daily Haiku:

Counting continues

Another census complete

Are they surviving?