Special Report From Parker Levinson:
It’s hard to believe that the 2023 field season is wrapped up. It feels like just yesterday that we were all deplaning at Phoenix Airfield in Antarctica and gearing up for our first day in the field. We accomplished so much in such a short time frame.
The 2023 field research team takes a final lunch on the sea ice near the
Big Razorback Weddell seal pupping colony. Photo by Parker Levinson.
We started with tagging pups, working hard to get to each pup within a few days of its birth to see who its mom was. We continued to have new pups born until the first week of December, which is relatively late for this population since the most pups are born right around Halloween.
While we continued to monitor for new pups, we switched gears in November to start working on resight surveys where we record every seal in our study area to determine who is alive. We completed 6 surveys across the season to give us the maximum potential to see a seal if it is alive and in our study area. (Sometimes seals are swimming when we count them, so we have to do a lot of surveys to maximize our potential to see them.) We were also able to retag many animals whose tags were faded or broken, including a 24-year-old male who had just one tag left! Getting to him this season and giving him a set of new, readable tags allows us to follow him throughout the rest of his life.
Field team researcher Kelsey Cronin checks a seal's tag on a recent Weddell seal survey. Photo by Parker Levinson.
At the same time as all of this, we flew to seal colonies outside our study area to collect small tissue samples to be analyzed. With the help and assistance of helicopter operations and field safety, we were able to get to 4 different outlying colonies, which will be incredibly useful for our genetics work.
An LC-130 plane leaving McMurdo Station. Photo by Parker Levinson.
As I write this on the plane flying out of McMurdo Station, what sticks in my head the most about this season are the remarkable seal moments we get to witness. I don’t remember every single pup that we tagged, but I remember the special moment we had watching a male seal use a breathing hole while we were having lunch. (We were eating in a Dive Hut, a heated structure with a hole in the floor and a hole in the sea ice for scuba divers to access the ocean.)
Black and white rendition of Parker Levinson's photo of a male Weddell seal in a dive hole, as seen inside a dive hut.
Or when we watched a mother use her nose to assist her pup getting out of the water the first time it swam. Or when we saw a pup break off snow chunks to toss around in the air. It’s moments like that, moments watching seals be seals, that make this project so extraordinary. We get to see our study species uninterrupted and unbothered existing in their habitat every single day, and that’s pretty unique.
This pupping season, five new early-career scientists got to experience field work in Antarctica for the first time. We are really pleased with how well they all did at efficiently and safely collecting data, and all that they were able to learn about Antarctica, Weddell seals, and broader science that takes place through the United States Antarctic Program.
Thank you to the field technicians for their hard work in the field. Thanks to everyone at McMurdo Station who supported our work this season. And thank you to all our supporters for following along this season. It's really rewarding to be able to share our work with you.
Until next season!
- Parker Levinson
_________________________
Parker Levinson is the 2023 Antarctica Field Research Team Leader, and a Masters Student on the Weddell seal population project at Montana State University.
Comments