Season Wrap-up by Parker Levinson:
It’s hard to believe that our season has come to an end. It seems like just yesterday we were waiting for our first pup to be born. Now we’re back in New Zealand enjoying the sunset and savoring fresh vegetables while reminiscing about our season.
Final day in the field, 2021. From L to R: Evan Shields, Victor Villalobos, and Parker Levinson.
Every season is unique, and this year was no exception. We lucked out with really good sea ice this year. In fact, the sea ice extended the farthest it has in at least five years which allowed us to easily access most areas in our study area. However, since we were living at McMurdo Station, located at the southern tip of our study area, we did have a lot of driving to do; we racked up close to 6000 miles on our snowmobiles this season!
The record-breaking 32 year old mom with her 2021 pup on our final survey.
We finished the season by conducting a few study area wide surveys where we record every single seal that's on top of the ice. We saw our record breaking 32-year old mom and her pup on every survey! With just three people, those days can get very long as we record seal after seal, but the data we collect are incredibly valuable, giving us the information we need to estimate survival and breeding status in addition to other population metrics.
Snowy Pup: a week of snow brought about some weather delays but also made for some very cute moments with pups.
We also spent a large portion of our time ensuring all the tagged seals had a complete set of tags. Seals occasional lose or break tags, so in order to track an individual seal for their entire life we replace any tag set that isn’t complete. The end of the season was quite busy with these tasks, especially after about a week of weather delays, but we were able to get a lot done thanks to the hard work of the field crew.
Molting Pup: a pup beginning to lose its baby fur; they grow up so quickly!
Though small, the field crew was mighty. Victor and Evan absolutely crushed it. They worked tirelessly through some long, tiring days in the field to get everything done and always managed to make the difficult days fun. I also want to thank both Kaitlin Macdonald and Jay Rotella for the support they provided from afar. From field logistics to database management, there’s a lot to learn about this 50+ year study, but they were always available to answer questions, offer guidance, and provide encouragement throughout the season. Of course, what we do would not be possible without the support of everyone at McMurdo Station. We sincerely appreciate everything folks at McMurdo and back in the States have done to support us. We’re so fortunate to get to do the science that we do and we don’t take that lightly. Thank you all for an incredible 2021 field season!
- Parker Levinson
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Parker Levinson is an M.S. student on the project and is our crew leader. She was a great research technician on our project last season. She also worked on penguins at Cape Royds the past 2 years. Over the summer, she spent a great deal of time preparing to be our crew leader; Kaitlin Macdonald, our very experienced Ph.D. student and multi-time project participant and crew leader, has been a great help with Parker’s preparations and will be standing by to provide advice as needed. We are really fortunate to have Parker on our team and as our crew leader.