Scouting for seals in the Twin Otter!
The alarm sounded early this morning and I anxiously hopped out of bed. Today our team is doing a 'recce'. What's a 'recce'? It's a reconnaissance flight to locate seals and today we took the twin otter.
Weddell seal team getting on the Twin Otter.
Knowing we were in for a long ride before we got to the air field, the OAE's (Old Antarctic Explorers) took this opportunity to catch a quick nap; while the newbie's - like me - enjoyed the view and took lots of photos.
OAE's (Old Antarctic Explorers) sleeping on Ivan the Terra Bus.
Today's route took us from McMurdo Sound north along the Antarctic coast line to the Drygalski Ice Tongue about 150 miles north of Ross Island. It was overcast when we left McMurdo but by time we got to Drygalski Ice Tongue the view had cleared. In past years, the team had had good luck finding seals in Granite Harbor and Tripp Bay - and we saw some today. Take a look!
This is a map of the area we flew over in the Twin Otter.
View on route to the Drygalski Ice Tongue. Amazing isn't it!
Our main mission was to find seals that were haul-out on the ice and to get an estimated number of seals at each site. We'll use this data when planning the route for tagging purposes. So we had to keep our eyes peeled out the small plane windows. It's amazing how difficult it is trying to spot something dark on something white. Holes, cracks, rocks and shadows can be deceiving. We even saw a small group of penguins - but they were barely noticeably from the plane.
Photo of seals from the Twin Otter. How many do you see?
I think we are going to pass on these seals. They may be a little difficult to tag.
Let's give it a try
The video below was taken by Patrick Robinson. This is exactly what we saw from the twin otter. How many seals can you count?
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So... how did you do?
Each team member also viewed the video and their counts varied widely. One of the principal investigators (project leader) counted 10 seals and a graduate student counted 21, the rest were between 14 and 17. The mean number was 15.
Feel free to take a look at the video again - just to make sure.