It is hard to believe but our season is quickly coming to an end. This was an incredible season for our team. We had a record number of pups and an enormous number of seals in our study area. I think how smoothly and easily our season unfolded with record numbers of animals speaks volumes about the quality of our crew.
To put the season in perspective here are a few statistics:
• We set 18 miles of flagged road on the sea ice.
• We tagged over 650 Weddell seal pups in our study area.
• We tagged 6 pups at White Island.
• We enrolled 173 pups in the mass study.
• We weighed a total of 69,708 lbs. worth of pups.
• We deployed and collected 122 temperature logging tags.
• We counted 1,444 tagged animals in our largest survey.
• We have photogrammetry mass assessment projects for
40 Weddell females.
As always it is bittersweet to be leaving, but I am so proud of the work we accomplished this season and honored to have worked with such an incredible group of individuals.
By Kaitlin Macdonald
M.S. Student, Montana State University
Co-Leader of the 2015 Field Crew