That's a big rock.... wait.... that's a huge elephant seal!

Throughout the year we get the occasional elephant seal (or smell-a-phant as they are known here) lazing on the beaches. They seem to spend most of their time sleeping, and lying in piles of rotten kelp, which gives them a particularly pungent aroma. Most of the individuals are small juveniles or females, which has made the last couple of weeks particularly exciting when adult males began cluttering the place up. Adult males have the distinctive elephant like nose and are absolutely colossal. It is coming into elephant seal breeding time so the males have begun to claim territory in the hopes that females will come ashore to give birth to the pups that they were conceived 49-50 weeks earlier. So far there aren’t many females, but fingers crossed that we will get a couple of pups. They have already started being born on mainland South Georgia and look absolutely adorable. Bird Island isn’t a major breeding area for them, I can’t imagine why as it seems a pretty cool place to me, but there are usually a few pups. 

My whay a big nostril you have!

Here are a few facts about the Southern elephant seal to make you go “wow!” Males can grow to between 4.5-6.5 metres and can weigh up to 3700kg!! That is around 57 times as much as I weigh, a second good reason they are named after elephants. The females are smaller at between 2.5-4.0 metres, and weighing a measly 359-800kg. The pups are around 1.3m long when born and weighing 36-50kg (so less than me). However they put on up to 3.6kg per day and after less than a month can weigh 110-160kg with a length of 1.6m. The massive weight increase and fairly small increase in length means that they become extremely round and look close to exploding.  They need to go on this massive milk gorge as at only 3 weeks old their mothers leave them to fend for themselves. 

Male elephant seal yawning.

Another cool “ele” fact is that when at sea they have been recorded diving up to 1444m and for almost two hours underwater. As a scuba diver who can only go down a few measly tens of metres, this is pretty astounding. 

An ele and me. He doesn't actually look very big in this picture, but believe me he is.

One of our resident males has taken up “singing” at all hours of the night, and had me confused the first time it woke me up as it sounded like a bit like a tiger roaring but a bit lower in frequency. Luckily for me I was pretty confident that a tiger hadn’t gotten loose on the island so I could sleep on in peace. Hopefully he will find himself a girlfriend soon and we might have ourselves a pup to fawn over.

Is that a big rock? Nope, just an ele using a rock as a pillow.

A male ele with a male fur seal for size comparison.

Wandering albatross chick ringing- they're so grown up!

It seems a long time ago that I was visiting the Wanderer study area every day awaiting the arrival of the first Wandering albatross egg, which finally arrived on the 12th December 2012. The eggs are extremely hefty weighing in at around 500g, so not surprisingly the birds that emerge from them turn out to be very large indeed. The chicks spend the winter months being battered by snow, wind and rain hunkering down on their nests, awaiting the next meal brought back by one of their devoted parents.  By mid August the chicks are large enough to be ringed and receive their very own metal ring with a unique seven digit number that will identify them for life. The chicks in the main study area also receive a darvic, which is a plastic coloured ring with three digits on it. The reason for this is that at fledging time I have to visit the study area daily to see when each chick fledges. With the darvic rings I don’t have to get too close to be able to see who is who, thereby minimising disturbance to the birds. They live up to their name of wandering albatross, as just before fledging they leave the nest and can walk fairly big distances to find the best spot for takeoff. It really helps to have the darvic rings to avoid confusion. 

A friendly chick sporting a metal ring and a darvic

In mid-August I got out the ringing pliers and what looked like far too many rings and began. There are just fewer than 500 chicks to ring this year, which does sound a lot, but 20 years ago there were at least double this number.  Ringing can only be done on dry days, which on Bird Island aren’t all too common, so although it is now approaching the end of September I still haven’t quite finished. Ringing an albatross chick is a whole different ball game to ringing the smaller birds I was used to before I came to the island, but you soon get used to it. The chicks definitely have their own personalities, with some being very placid and barely batting an eyelid, whereas others are feistier and peck you in the legs/bum while you are getting the ring on. However once the ring is on most of them have a little shake and flap and settle back down on the nest. Every single chick on the island gets a ring, so Jerry (penguin man) has been helping me ring chicks in the further away areas of the island.

Chick showing off his new darvic

A Giant Petrel "helping" me whilst out ringing.

I’m saving a few chicks for when my replacement Jess arrives in just under seven weeks. I will need to train her in how to handle these big chicks ready for her to do it all again next year.

Another of my favourite chicks showing off his brand new feathers.

The chicks are now losing their fluffy white down, and their dark grey body feathers and white faces are coming through. Over the next few years they will become as white as their parents. They will spend the next few years at sea, wandering the oceans going as far away as Australia, South Africa, and South America. Some have even been known to make full circumnavigations of the globe, which we have learned from putting geolocators on them. Hopefully I’ll get a few more back this year so we can see where they have been.

Chick practicing flapping to strengthen the wing muscles.

Film making Antarctic style

For one August weekend the wintering Antarctic community are all doing the same thing, making films for the annual Antarctic Film Festival. On Friday evening each base is emailed a list of five elements that have to be included in the film, which these year were; the sound of a real sneeze, a bathtub (problematic for us as we don’t have one), a gingerbread man, the phrase “Voulez vous couche avec moi ce soir” and a ping pong ball. We were all excited about making the film and came up with a general Star Wars theme, as we had watched the films earlier in the winter. On Friday night the script was written and we started getting the costumes together, as there are only four of us on the island we each had to play a few different characters.  Saturday was the filming day and we had one of the most fun days we’ve had in the whole winter. A lot of time was spent laughing at the bloopers and just the script in general, which we all thought was pretty funny, but I’ll leave that up to you to judge! As we live on Bird Island we decided we needed to get as many animal extras in as possible including; Gentoo penguins (jabbas), a male fur seal as Chewbacca, some Sheathbills, and a wandering albatross chick as the emperor (who put in a sterling performance). 

The general story of the film is that Han Solo, Leia and Luke have headed to Bird Island to hide out after the destruction of the Death Star in the first film or number four if you want to be pedantic. Unfortunately Darth Vader finds them and heads to the island with a couple of Stormtroopers to capture them.  The goodies then have to fight the baddies and try to escape.

If you are interested in seeing more then you can check the film out on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_cNkvyn288

We completed filming on Saturday and spent Sunday editing the film, and I made a little sequence with R2D2 and C3PO. By the end of Sunday we were done and then had the task of attempting to upload our film on our terrible internet connection. We managed to do it eventually by turning off any other internet seeking equipment. 

It was then time to vote. Slowly we downloaded videos from the other bases and had an evening of watching them. We made our choices best film, best acting, best screenplay, best use of elements, and best cinematography and sent them off. We still haven’t had final confirmation of the results but surprisingly for us Bird Island is doing pretty well being in the top 3 for four categories. So fingers crossed I’ll be able to confirm the results soon. Not bad for the smallest base in Antarctica.