I got an amazing opportunity to drive out across the sea ice in a Piston Bully (snow cat type vehicle) to bring some fuel to some cold scientists today. When we arrived they greeted us warmly with hot cocoa and lots of thanks. As it turned out, they weren’t really cold, but they had run out of fuel in their lab, which needed to remain warm to protect expensive equipment. One of the scientists took us out a few hundred yards from the camp (second photo) to look at the Weddell seals they've been studying. They had just begun birthing within the last week and there were cows with pups strewn all over the sea ice near tidal cracks, which are their access to the water. The team of biologists there are measuring the mammary gland output of the mothers and weighing their pups daily to gain more information about their metabolic rates.

As we approached the colony the sight was very foreign and still hard to describe. The first thing we came upon was the cow depicted in the last photo (below) that was crying and moaning over her pup (bottom right corner of picture) that had died earlier in the day and lay frozen in the snow. There was blood frozen to the ice from the birthing and seals everywhere that looked cold and frozen. However, it is their summer time and they were simply sunbathing in a cool breeze (-15 degrees plus 20 knot wind… balmy by their standards). The biologist said that today was about as mild as the weather had been since they'd set up camp, which was hard to picture.

Apparently these seals have about a 30% mortality rate when birthing and the team had already collected 2 dead pups in the last week. It was a sad sight, but numerous others that had been more fortunate nursed healthy and chubby pups while rolling in the snow for fun. The mothers will nurse their young most of the day for one to two weeks before leaving them to hunt for more food. The pups aren’t weaned until six weeks, but will begin swimming at two.

~G