Elephant seal pups

This year turned out to be a lucky one for Bird Island residents with two elephant seal pups born on Landing beach, which is the next beach over from us. One morning when Craig was heading over to SSB (the seal study beach) to do some work on the infrastructure there, when we got an excited call over the radio. For a few days there had been a couple of fat females lying on the beach next to one of the colossal males. On this particular morning Craig had spotted a black lump lying next to one of the females, and on closer inspection it turned out to be a pup!

Elephant seal mother protecting her new born pup from a brown skua that fancied a taste of umbilical cord

We all rushed over to take a look from a distance at the newborn. Elephant seal mothers are quite nervous, so we didn’t want to get too close in case we scared her and she abandoned the pup. Mother and pup were being harassed by a pair of brown skuas that saw the pups birth as a hearty meal opportunity. The skuas kept grabbing at the pups umbilical cord trying to rip bits off. The mother was getting very agitated with them and tried to protect her pup as best she could. It had  been slim pickings for the skuas since they arrived back on the island after winter, so they weren’t giving up without a fight. 

Over the next couple of days the pup was joined by a second pup, born to an adjacent female. The pups then spent most of their time sleeping, or suckling the extremely fatty milk from their mothers. They had a lot growing to do before their mothers left them after only a couple of weeks of nursing. The pups seemed to grow at a huge rate (up to 3.6kg per day), and then began moulting their black thick fur, to reveal the typical brown elephant seal fur below. 

I think this one was a bit surprised about being born onto a busy, noisy beach

The mothers left the pups when they still looked far too young to us, but the pups seemed content enough, and the smaller of the two was often seen attempting to suckle from the other pup. Eventually they began to explore their surroundings and paddle in the water. Recently one of them swam around to Freshwater Beach where the base is located. Hannah and Cian (our two seal biologists) had a close encounter with it when it decided they looked interesting and came over to investigate them. 

Ele pup taking a rest

Now they are fully moulted they are ready to venture out to sea to begin feeding themselves as they have lost a lot of weight since their mothers left. Let’s hope that in a few years they return to Bird Island to breed, rather than heading to the South Georgia mainland.

The two pups once their mums had gone back to sea. The male fur seal in the background seemed to think that they were female fur seals not two week old ele pups!

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.

Middle of winter

Before I left the UK people were amazed to hear that I would be spending 16 months living on a tiny island in the middle of the Southern Ocean. More people have climbed Mount Everest than have set foot on this island. When I told them that during the winter months (for an 8-9 month duration) there would only be four of us on the island, most people were incredulous. Everyone wanted to know “How would I cope?” “Wouldn’t I get bored?” “What if I didn’t get on with the other people?” and “What if you, or worse, someone else goes crazy?”. 

We are now five months into our winter and so far we are all good, and no one is totally insane (people do seem to speak to themselves with far more frequency than I noticed in the UK, but maybe that’s just because I’m spending 24/7 with them). Living together on a small base on a very small island certainly has its difficulties, but life is much simpler. I am definitely enjoying being away from the madness of life in the UK. I can’t tell you how great it is to never have to go food shopping, visit the bank, drive anywhere (especially on motorways), or be squashed into a tube carriage with your face shoved in someone’s armpit. 

There are things I do miss there are the obvious ones my family, friends and my pets. Then there are the less obvious things like flowers, trees, the SUN (it’s not been seen in what feels a very long time), fresh food (I’d kill for a salad right now….mmmm fresh rocket and cherry tomatoes!), lemonade, butterflies and moths, UK birds (especially the noisy ones like Swifts and Skylark), grass (the short, nice to lie on variety), radio, thunder and lightning storms (we don’t get the right clouds), being able to go out without having to wear thermals and salopettes. 

In order to survive a “winter” in Antarctica without having a rubbish time, or at worst completely losing it, you have to do certain things. Firstly you have to talk to your fellow winterers and not spend all your time in your room working your way through endless box sets. Secondly you have to devise events (mainly fancy dress evenings) to keep you all entertained. In the last couple of months there have been a fair number of ‘events’ on Bird Island. The main one being Mid Winter, which is a big deal in Antarctica. This years mid winter fell on the 21 June, and is the turning point of the sun returning to Antarctica. For us who never experience total darkness it isn’t such an important time, but for our colleagues at the Halley base, who have months of darkness it’s very important. However we didn’t want to be left out and celebrated enthusiastically along with the rest of the continent. 

Our official mid winter photo that we sent to all of the other bases. The Wandering albatross chick was pretty good at posing for the shot! (Photo by Craig Brown).

It was our annual week off (although we still had to do the Leopard seal checks every day and I had to check on my chicks). First up was crazy golf around the base, we had eight holes to complete in the generator shed, lab, office, lounge, and corridors. We each designed a couple of holes using whatever we could find.  Somehow I managed to pip the others to the post to win the coveted chocolate bar. We hadn’t thought some of them through very well, and gave up after taking 30 shots on each hole, otherwise we would have been there all night! 

Me taking a shot in the generator shed (Photo by Craig Brown)

Jerry following the crazy golf course around the office (yes the route was under the desk!)

Wimbledon 2013 (the table tennis edition) was also held during mid winters week and was won by Craig, there was a short interruption in play due to a Leopard seal appearing in the bay (but at least there was no rain!).

Wimbledon 2013 (Photo by Craig Brown)

Continuing on the sports theme we tossed the caber, wanged the welly, and completed the obstacle course (with a fair bit of cheating and egg throwing). The obstacle course was made more difficult because the Sheathbills kept stealing parts of the course. I’m not entirely sure who won, but I’m inclined to put it down as a victory to the girls. Unfortunately due to generators problems we didn’t get to finish the mid winter games, but hopefully we’ll get around to it soon.

Craig tossing the caber during the mid winter highland games (Photo by Jerry Gillham)

On Mid winters day itself we awoke to a brilliant fry up courtesy of Jerry our base commander. After filling our bellies we went out to check for Leopard seals and I made friends with a tiny Elephant seal. Once the work was done for the day we decided to get the traditional dip out of the way. Around 20 minutes prior to going in we spotted a Leopard seal in the bay, so waited until we thought it had gone. We then ran out in our towels and dressing gowns to the water edge, got the camera set up and raced into the water. It was cold! The fact it had started snowing and that there was an icy breeze didn’t help. We didn’t get in very deep before Jerry sounded what I thought was the Leopard seal alarm, but was just the turn around sound. I ran pretty fast out of the water imagining a Leopard seal coming after me! We grabbed a towel and raced back to the house to the warm showers. I’m not going to post any pictures as there are only a couple still in existence and the others might kill me! 

Me and a tiny Elephant seal seen on our mid winters day walk (Photo by Craig Brown).

Once we had warmed ourselves up we settled down for a screening of ‘The Thing’- the traditional movie that everyone across Antarctica watches. Luckily for us we don’t have the constant darkness that other bases have so we weren’t too terrified to go outside by ourselves after watching it. 

In the evening we tucked into our mid winter meal (similar to Christmas dinner) and had some of our two cakes! After finishing the food it was time to exchange gifts, that we had all spent a lot of time working on. Everyone seemed pleased with what they got, gifts included a painting of all the wildlife on the island, a set of hand-made knives in a box, a framed hand drawn map of the island, and a hand painted deck of  cards and Tabasco glass shot glass. We spent the rest of the evening playing card games and doing a little bit of dancing. 

Mid winters meal (Photo by Craig Brown)

We received greeting cards and messages from all of the other bases, and even had letters from David Cameron and President Obama. Stephen Fry sent us a video message and we all had messages from our families (although those we didn’t get for quite a bit later as we couldn’t download the messages with our slow internet connection). 

Jerry's knives made by Craig (Photo by Jerry Gillham)

Hannah's picture made by me (Photo by Jerry)

My painting by Jerry (Photo by Jerry)

Craig's cards and shot glass made by Hannah (Photo by Jerry).

The following day we were all pretty worn out from the festivities so enjoyed a movie marathon and relaxed.

Near the end of the week we went on a bar crawl. I hear you say “But don’t you live on a tiny island, what bars??” Well for one day only the base was transformed into four different bars, with each of us running one each. We started off at the Jolly Albatross Inn, a pirate themed bar by walking the plank blindfolded to get in. After a couple of piratey drinks, mainly featuring rum, some pirate music and a game of find the treasure (like pin the tail of the donkey but with a map and a sticker) we headed to the beach. Hannah’s bar was a Hawaiian themed cocktail bar in the boot room (which is the hottest place on base). We all got into our shorts and relaxed beneath the palm trees and sipped cocktails with our sunglasses on. Following that we headed to the laboratory for some crazily coloured drinks- green and purple (suspiciously they just tasted like cider and G&T). Finally we headed off to the generator shed for some drinks with very dodgy sounding names (yet fairly tasty).  A great night was had by all, and everyone felt fine in the morning. 

Jerry and I chilling in the Hawaiian bar (Photo by Hannah Wood).

Bar number 3 the Puboratory in the laboratory (Photo by Craig Brown)

Me directing Craig onto the plank ready to walk into the pirate bar (Photo by Hannah Wood).

Relaxing at the end of the bar crawl evening on some very comfy lagging in the generator room (Photo by Craig Brown).

We rounded off mid winters week by holding our very own Glastonbury festival. We printed off the line up and tried to listen to songs by some of those artists. We had a BBQ and camped out ln the beach. The Skuas were very interested in the tents and kept trying to pull up our guy ropes. Fortunately they left us alone during the night and didn’t keep us awake. 

Since mid winters we have been up to lots of other stuff but I’ll save that for another post.

Non-bird animals (oh and a few birds)

Now I’ve covered most of the birds, it’s onto the non-bird animals, namely the seals! It is continuing to be a good year for Leopard seal sightings. In May we sighted Leopard seals on 25 occasions, compared to last year’s four sightings. Each of the seals are given a name and in May we saw; Max, Paddy Boy, Stephanie (my name sake), Maurice, and Pearce. Hannah our resident seal expert has been out every day patrolling the beaches for sightings. Most of the time they aren’t particularly hard to spot lying on the beaches, or head standing (sleeping vertically in the water with their flippers sticking up). Sometimes we even get to witness them eating, which involves lots of splashing and failing about. It’s not only the human residents of the island who are on the lookout for them eating. As soon as the birds notice a kill they surround the seal trying to grab any pieces. It’s a fairly dangerous occupation but usually the seal is too busy eating to pay attention to the birds.  June was another productive Leopard seal month with 20 sightings. Pearce the seal was first spotted here 22 years ago when he was already an adult, that is one old seal! Hannah managed to retrieve a second GLS logger from a seal, which is very exciting as it is only the fifth to ever be retrieved. I’ll update with where they have been once the data is analyzed. 

Sleepy Leopard seal on the beach.

July has seen a few less sightings but in recent days the number have picked up again. This morning whilst sitting on the jetty a Leopard seal swam over looking at us curiously until a Fur seal jumped in the water and it took off after it. The seal got away as he was a bit too big for the Lep to handle. 

 

Maurice in the bay yawning (photo by Hannah Wood)

Antarctic Fur seal numbers have been increasing on the island again, with some of the big males returning to the island, after being at sea for a few months feeding up following the breeding season. You can definitely tell they are back from the smell! They have a very strong musky odour that you just can’t get away from when walking on the beaches. The numbers are still fairly small, we can still walk along the beaches without getting chased very much. 

A female Antarctic Fur seal

One of the less pleasant aspects of our job is to help seals that have been entangled in fishing gear. This week we were all involved in helping a young male that had a thick layer of parcel tape wrapped tightly around his body. After a bit of a struggle and getting  pretty soggy socks we managed to cut through the tape. The rest of it should now fall off when he is swimming. It’s very satisfying to remove debris from the seals, as in most cases the seal would die when it grew too big and the debris cuts into it. Happy story this time. I just wish people would think about what they discard into the ocean. 

Young male Antarctic fur seal after we had cut the tape from his chest.

The Elephant seals are still hanging out on the beaches lying on piles of rotting kelp. A couple of weeks ago we had our first large(ish) male. He didn’t have the typical big nose, but he was huge! Later in the season we might get some fully grown adult males (fingers crossed). 

The big elephant seal male with me for scale (Photo by Craig Brown).

Elephant seal relaxing on a bed of stinky rotting kelp.

Seals done, it’s onto whales. Usually by this time of year the Southern Right Whales have migrated north from this area, but for some reason they are still here. We have sighted them off the southern side of the island on a number of occasions recently. The easiest way to identify them when they are quite far out to the sea is by what the blow looks like when they breathe out. Southern rights have a V-shaped blow, which is very distinctive. They could possibly be around because of the higher than average water and air temperatures. Hannah and I saw one very close to the cliffs the other day but it wasn’t in the mood to perform any tricks and didn’t show us its tail. 

So mammals completed, it’s back to birds. Over the winter period myself and Jerry (the other bird nerd) count Snowy Sheathbill and South Georgia Pintails (ducks) every couple of weeks. The counts correspond with the highest tides, and we count the same area as was done last year. The reason for the counts is to assess if the rat eradication programme that was carried out this year is having any effects on the birds.  Duck numbers seemed very low, but all of a sudden the ducks have made a comeback, and they are often heard beeping (they have a very weird electronic beeping call) through the night. 

South Georgia Pintail duck- the only duck I know that eats meat and beeps.

Snowy Sheathbill scavenging on a Gentoo penguin carcass.