"Whatever you do, don't drop them"

Remember how I told you about how Bec wanted people to help out with the fur seal work? Well, I volunteered. She and her partner, Al B. (Al joined us last month- he had to finish his last semester of university, then he caught a ride down to Macquarie Island with a tourist ship), have a lot of work to do with the pups right now- new trops are being born and the gazellas are getting bigger. The pups are marked with bleach when they are born, then weighed at regular intervals as they grow. These big weigh-ins require eight hands, instead of just Al and Bec's total of four, so they need two people to help them out every few weeks. So anyway, I said I'd do it.

The day before we went out, Corey pulled me aside with some advice. He studied new Zealand furries for his PhD, and has caught thousands of pups. "Whatever you do, don't drop them," he said. "Not if they s--- on you, not if they bite you. You will want to. Your first instinct when those teeth dig in will be to hurl it away from you as far as you can. DO NOT DO THIS. They are small and you will hurt them." He spoke slowly and clearly, making constant eye contact, as if to a child, trying to impress upon me the importance of what he was saying. I mean really, I am a geologist, not an idiot- this seemed like a bit of overkill. Sure, I said. I won't. I'll hold on. "If they do latch on,"he continued, "flick the tip of their nose with your finger until they let go to try to bite your finger, then give them something else less painful to bite." All right. I can do that, I said. "And also," he added, "wear lots of baggy layers- makes it harder for them to get to skin."

Great.

So with this in my head, I woke up to a lovely morning on the assigned day. I lay in bed thinking, "I am going to catch fur seal pups today." I wasn't sure how I felt about it. The stories certainly were less than appealing- teeth, feces, etc- but I had decided that this was one of those experiences that I should take if I could. Right? Sure. So I got out of bed and started dressing. It was a warm day (the Macca heat wave continues...), so I stood in front of the closet in a bit of a quandary. How do I layer in warm weather? I put on a thermal top and finally decided on some heavy yellow work-man's overalls, huge and baggy, that are issued to all expeditioners, I guess just in case we suddenly become seized with the urge to re-build a tractor engine or something. Then I thought just hiking boots and gaitors, and that would be good. Then I re-thought. Took off everything, put on a tight-fitting tank top, then the thermal top over that and also thermal bottoms, then a big baggy tee shirt, and THEN the big yellow overalls. And then the gaitors and boots. Just in case.

Bec laughed when she saw me in my shiny new yellow overalls. "Look at you, all bright and yellow! You won't be looking like that by the end of the day!" she said. We trooped up and over the hill- Bec, Al, Robb (communications tech- keeps our network in order and keeps us in touch with the world- the other volunteer for the day) and I, dropping down to the west coast of North Head. As we walked, I told Bec about Corey's advice. She told me it was very good advice, and then asked me if I had seen the scar on Jane's arm? Jane is a mutual friend of ours, who also studies fur seals. I told her I hadn't. "It's pretty impressive-- goes from here," pointing to the little bone that sticks out of your wrist, "to here." pointing halfway between her wrist and elbow. "A pup latched on, and she did drop it- but it hung on. Ripped the skin until she came to her senses and gathered it in her arms again. I doubt she has dropped one since them!"

Number 8

Bec and Al did their "re-sights" (recording the tag numbers of all the animals on the beach) and looking for pups that were roaming- the little gangs that break out of the harems and explore the beaches and rock stacks. Bec walked back to Rob and me. "Karah and Rob- why don't you come with me. Al can set everything up. There are three pups over in that corner," she said, gesturing to three balls of fur playing in the rocks, "and if we don't get all three at once, the strays will take off. I'll catch them, and if you could carry them over to Al, that would be great." Sure, we said to her, no problem.

"Sure, " I said inside my head, "no problem. Just a little seal, no problem. Some teeth- you're tough, you can handle it. A little poop, no big deal." a little silent pep talk.

We snuck up on the threesome, Bec again telling us how to hold them- the small ones in our arms, pointing their faces away from our bodies, supporting their chests with one arm, and the big ones by the ankles, supporting their bodies down one leg (they bite on to your ankle which will help them stay on, she said.) She grabbed the smallest one, passed to me, then grabbed the last two, kept one, passed the other to Rob. Bang, bang, bang. Just like that. No time to think- I had no choice but to take the little warm bundle in my arms, ever wary of the business end. Or the business end that bites, anyway. I held her tail flippers in my left hand with her body over my right and her head over my right elbow, my mind racing, waiting for her to struggle...

But she didn't. She didn't do anything. She just sat there in my arms looking around. I walked up the beach to where Al was, hearing the yelps of the pups that Bec and Rob had as they followed me. I looked back to see Rob and Bec hanging on to the tail flippers of two exploding wriggling gremlins, walking carefully but awkwardly. "We'll do yours last, mate," Al said, smiling, since mine seemed to really not care one way or the other what I was doing. I walked a few meters away- I didn't think she would want to see what was happening to her playmates before it was her turn- carrying her like something impossibly fragile, feeling like I do when I hold other people's babies, like somehow if I breathe wrong I will somehow break them. She just came along for the ride, seeming to be interested in the world viewed from this new height. She felt like a large puppy in my arms, but I kept reminding myself that this was a SEAL, I was holding a seal, a wild animal, not a puppy, nothing like a puppy. But the soft heft had a similar effect- you know how happy you feel when you hold a puppy? It was like that. At the same time, I knew she couldn't possibly be enjoying this, not like a dog might. A strange feeling.

Al called me over, as it was "my" pup's turn to be weighed and measured. He was holding open a large green canvas bag. I looked at him. He said, "Okay, you can put her in." I looked at him, looked at the dark, scary bag, and pulled back. He said again, "Okay, mate, you can put her in," thinking that I hadn't heard him the first time. I shook my head. "I don't think she will like it in there," I told him, "I think she likes it better out here," feeling protective of my little charge. He gave me a half smile, used to seal neophytes. "No, she won't like it, but she goes in anyway."

He held the bag and I lowered her into it. She came to life with a wiggle and a yelp, but too late- she was tucked into the depths of the canvas. We hung the bag from a scale, and Al called out her weight and her number ("8", bleached into a front flipper) to Bec, who recorded it in a yellow weatherproof notebook. Al unhooked the bag, and gently set it on the ground. He opened the top, leaving an edge draped over 8's head, to protect himself from her teeth, and pulled her out by her hind flippers. He carried her over to a foam mat that he had rolled out on the ground, and laid her down, carefully pinning her between his knees, while Bec handed him one end of a measuring stick. She pulled 8's hind flippers along the scale, laying her out as long and flat as possible, and recorded her length in the notebook. Then they let her go, and 8 bounded off into the rocks again.

Wildlife research is a really difficult issue, and one we have had to deal with regularly on the island. A few days before we sailed, all of the wildlife research permits were suspended because of lobbying by animal rights activists. So there we were, all packed and ready to go, and 2/3 of the scientists weren't going to be allowed to do their science. They had to wait until all of the projects were reviewed by a new committee. Luckily, the reviews were favorable, and as of last week, all of the permits were restored. Most were issued in October, but the ellie seal permits were held up. Unfortunately, this meant that the ellie sealers weren't able to deploy satellite and time-depth recorders on their subjects for the summer foraging trip, which has jeopardized the study. But life goes on, science goes on, we do the best with what we have, I suppose.

Speaking of the ellies....

Almost all of the weaners are gone. Just like that. No good-byes, no ceremony, just one day someone asked me if I had noticed that they weren't around anymore, and sure enough, they weren't. I was just back from working on the west coast, where there had been plenty of seals to worry about- the moult is in full-on full season, with heaps of animals in noisy, smelly, aggressive piles everywhere. On the beaches, hidden in the tussocks stacked against the outcrops, all unusually "narky" as they say here (I love that word- so descriptive, I think...). Imagine trying to walk and work around big piles of teenage boy seals, all pissing each other off all day long, full of angst with no outlet. These boys can be big, too- some are 4 meters long. So they are adults, and they are physically capable of breeding, but they aren't quite big enough to take control of a harem. I would think that this is WHY they are so cranky.

So I was feeling pretty full of seals, and I just didn't notice that the small ones weren't quite as small as they were before. I guess I was more concerned about not being maimed. For some reason, their departure is making me sad. I loved having them around the station, watching them explore their world, sitting in the shallows with them swimming around me, having them taste my hands and feet with their toothless baby mouths, admiring their lovely velvet fur. And now they are off on their first big adventure, a 5000 km round trip, which only about half will survive. Who tells them where to go? How do they know how to hunt? How do they know what a predator looks like? Mysteries that will never be answered, I suppose.

As the weaners leave, their mothers are returning to moult. We have reached the stage in the moult where most of the non-breeders have moulted and left, or are moulting here now, and the first breeding females are just beginning to return. Which means that Corey's work is back in gear again. Corey is studying 7-8 year old female elephant seals, looking at where they go and what they are eating there when they get there. Pretty much all the seal work here, ellie and furry, has to do with fisheries and how exploitation of these fisheries could be threatening these sensitive species. Moreover, they are top predators, so they can be used to monitor the health of the fisheries- if the seals aren't doing well, chances are that the things lower down the food web aren't either.

The fur seal population is thought to be "recovering", but what they are recovering from is total decimation, and it has taken 100 years for them to do it. And needless to say, their numbers are NOTHING like they were before people arrived here. The ellie seal population wasn't exterminated, even though they were hunted, just like the furries, but for their blubber rather than their pelts. Luckily for the southern elephant seal, they are much more difficult to hunt than the fur seals are due to their size and recalcitrant nature, so a huge part of the population survived, primarily because of the remote nature of the rocky west coast. It is very difficult to land on the west coast, so there wasn't an efficient way to get the elephant seal oil out, so most hunting activity was restricted to the east. I read a story about how some of the sealers came up with the brilliant idea that they should try to herd the animals from Bauer Bay in the west across the island to Sandy Bay in the east. A massive failure- If you were 5 meters long and weighed 3 tons, I don't think you would listen to a little 1.8 meter 70 kilo creature either!

I had a front row seat to this particular interaction- I went sealing again, this time with the ellie sealers. I was working in my office, when the phone rang. It was Corey. "Hey, how're you going?" he asked. Fine, I said, what's up? "Oh, nothing. Just about to go catch a girl." he answered. "Oh." I said. Pause. "Yeah," he said, "going to catch a girl." (it kills me the way these biologists refer to their animals as "boys" and "girls"- it seems somehow inappropriate to me....) "That's great." I said. Pause. "So, what's up?" I repeated, polite code for "It is 10 in the morning, I have a lot of work to do, and I know you aren't ringing just to chat, so what do you want?" So he cut to the chase. "Matt's in the field and Kathryn is slushy today, so I was wondering if you would come help us out." "Do I have to get dirty?" I asked, knowing the elephant sealers' reputation for being the smelliest people on the island, since they spend a lot of their time covered in mud and ellie crap, which I wasn't interested in doing on this particular Wednesday morning. "No," he said, "you won't have to touch them. You're too small, anyway." (gee, thanks, feeling a little slighted here...) "We just need someone to record data.

So I bundled up, put in my gum boots and went out to meet the sealers down on the beach where we land the zodiacs. They had driven their tractor down, loaded up with their equipment, and were busily organizing their head bag, drugs and weighing gear. "Here." Corey thrust a small red notebook into my hands that was bound open on the front and back covers with rubber bands. He pointed to the chart he had penciled in. "We are going to need you to record all of these things," he said, and began to run through the list of abbreviations. "DOSE is how much drug we give her, IN is the time we give it to her, IND is how long it takes for the drug to take effect, OUT is the time she wakes up, which means she can hold her head up on her own, and is usually snarling at us," he added, laughing a little. "M is how much she weighs, L is her length. Then we will measure her girth in six places, numbered one to six, as well as the distances from G1-G6, G1-G3, and G3-G6. Next we will be measuring her back fat in those same six places, dorsal, left and right, which go in these columns here. We will call out these to you, and I want you to repeat them back to us when you write them down." All delivered rapid fire, with the speed of someone who has a job to do, while Helen was gathering the rest of the gear. "So where is she?" I asked. She's right over there," he said, pointing into the depths of the tussock. I couldn't see anything but grass from where I was, so I stepped to slightly higher ground. Still, all I could see was a big pile of about 5 big seals about three meters into the tussock- surely not a group they would try to get an animal out of. "Where?" I asked again, imagining that she would be off by herself somewhere. "Right there," he repeated, again pointing, as I could see now, directly at the big pile of BIG seals.

"C23," he said, moving toward her, with Helen alongside. "She's eight, born in 1993. She's had two pups, that we know of, but went missing for two and a half years, so she's not a great girl. But I did deploy a unit on her in 1999, and got a good record from it, so she's not bad." A "good" girl is a seal that returns to the isthmus every year, and has had a lot of pups, as their study is looking at the health of the animals and their progeny as a proxy for how well they are eating while they are at sea. A "bad" girl (in terms of the study) has more sporadic behavior, returning to remote parts of the island, or not returning at all at times. They want a predictable seal, so that when they deploy their satellite units and other instruments on them, they can get them back. Since these instruments can cost thousands of dollars each and carry priceless data, high retrieval rates are critical to the success of the study.

The two sealers climbed over the tussocks toward the seal, wielding short sticks with thick foam padding on the ends. They began to prod the seal, trying to convince her to separate from the pile, meanwhile keeping one eye on the teeth of her irritated neighbors who would take the occasional swipe at the unguarded leg or arm. They loomed over her, trying to look big and scary to get her move out into the open where she could be measured. She was having none of it. She snarled and bit their sticks, hunkering down her body, while facing off with the sealers. Trying to intimidate an elephant seal is something of a losing battle, especially when you are as small as a person. (While watching these two trying to move just one relatively smallish animal, I smiled to myself imagining the sealers of the 1800's trying to herd large numbers of them, not just a few meters, but at least 5 kilometers, from one side of the island to the other. What were they thinking?) She would fight for a while, then she would just lay her head down, as if tired, and ignore them. Then fight a little more, then rest. Finally, they pestered her enough to get her to move, and they convinced her to shift out of the tussocks.

Corey had been holding a beige canvas triangular bag with four ropes attached. He quickly tossed two of the ropes to Helen as the seal humped out of the tussocks, and the two crossed in front of the seal holding the bag between them, in front of her nose. The three danced briefly, the sealers trying to keep her out of the tussock and the deep rotten puddles, the seal backing away from the sealers, trying to evade them. With a signal, Helen and Corey trapped her head in the bag, pulling the edges swiftly over her neck. Helen passed her two ropes to Corey who straddled the back of the seal, holding the ropes of the head bag and pinning her flippers to the sides of her body simultaneously, keeping her from moving. Well, keeping her from running away, anyway. She still tossed about some. As Corey climbed on the seal, Helen took the syringe that she had been holding in her teeth, and quickly moved to the back of the seal. While Corey did his best to hold C23 still, Helen felt along the spine of the seal with her fingers, seeking a vein that runs there. She found it in a few seconds, and said "Going in," keeping Corey, who was facing the other way, posted with what was happening- communication being key when dealing with large dangerous animals. "I'm in. Time-" glancing at her watch, "10:30 and 50 seconds" I wrote this down, calling back, "Time in- 10:30 and 50 seconds." There was a pause- 45 seconds of the people holding their breath, until the seal visibly relaxed. Corey, holding the seal, felt her go under. "Okay, she's out," he said, "Time?" Helen checked her watch again, and I wrote it down. Then they got to work.

I was glad to be able to help out- god knows plenty of people around here have carried rocks for me- but to be completely honest with you, I was pretty bored. I was cold and I was writing down numbers. Even with the fur seals, after the novelty of holding a seal wore off, it was pretty mundane- catch, weigh, measure, catch, weigh, measure. I love the animals on the island, and I love the biologists that do the work (hopefully they will still be speaking to me after they read this!) and I know that this type of work is critical if we want to keep track of the living things that we are slowly (or not so slowly) driving to the edge of extinction, but I am really glad I don't have to do it. After one day fur sealing and one afternoon ellie sealing, I'm am really glad I am a geologist. It was a good experience, but I think the monotony would drive me nuts after a couple of days.

When I go to work, I never know what I am going to find. I will have a plan- "Today I am going to sample peridotites and check out the gabbro mylonites in Langdon Bay," for example, but I never know what I am going to see until I get there. Geology field work is just one big treasure hunt- I feel like a detective collecting evidence, wandering wherever I want to go, easily the most free scientist on the entire island (except the other geologists, of course!) Day after day, I climb mountains, comb beaches, hike up gullies, all in search of new outcrops, finding new relationships in the rocks that can either solve huge mysteries or create new ones.

And it cracks me up that when I meet new people, and tell them that I am a geologist and I work on Macquarie Island, they say, "Oh, that's interesting," and then we spend the rest of the night talking about elephant seals.

Imagine spending 5 seasons, six months each, working every day except for Christmas and New Year's, walking along the same area, measuring 30 faults a day. That is all you do, describe and measure 30 faults. Or 30 mylonite zones, or 30 sedimentary rock units, or whatever. Think of something that you do for your work, then do it over and over again, in the same place, all day long, day in, day out. This is what Corey does for his work. He walks the beaches, day after day, reading tags, writing them down, catching animals, weighing and measuring them. Over and over and over again. Helen, Kathryn, Al, Bec and Matt all do the same thing- BUT THEY ARE VOLUNTEERS. They aren't even getting paid. They aren't doing this for an advanced degree. Their patience, dedication and obvious love for their subjects (if they didn't love them, then why the hell would they do it?) blows my mind. And there must be something to it- I mean look at how much space I dedicate to the critters in my letters!

But I am still really happy to be studying geology.

I hope you all are well-

Karah