It’s too cold, even for seals… This is the first time I get to be down on the ice this early in the season. And you can feel the difference. While the temperature has been relatively warm for this time of the year, it still is too cold for us, humans with made up insulation. The thermometer right now is marking -23˚C (that is -6˚F for those non-scientist ones), but the wind chill makes the…
Five hours in San Francisco airport. Twenty two hours in Los Angeles. Ten hours in Sydney. Five days in Christchurch… But I made it to McMurdo. Despite all the bumps that this trip has had, I am finally in McMurdo, ready to start field work. Wait… Nope. There’s the training! Light vehicle training, medical training, waste disposal training, field safety training (including how to ride helicopters and survive in the sea ice), GPS class, environmental…
We just finished our second week, and it was another successful one! We are over halfway to our target sample size and we managed to put out 2 of the remaining three satellite tags. We also managed to opportunistically disentangle a juvenile elephant seal who had rope wrapped around his neck. All in all….another great week on the island! We now have have good locations from 5 juvenile sea lions. Our 6th tag…
I am rolling out our first ever field blog for the Costa Lab with some sea lion field work we just started at Año Nuevo Island yesterday! The field effort is being led by researchers from UCLA to understand the dynamics of Leptospirosis outbreaks in California sea lions. Leptospirosis is caused by a bacteria and is a zoonotic disease, meaning it can be transferred from animals to people, that infects not only marine but also terrestrial species. Our role…
