Part III: Antarctica and Academe - Scott Polar Research Institute

that the surface looked much softer and rounded than usual. We remained in sight
of the islands all day and the skies cleared completely. Throughout the day we were
landing on floes to collect crabeater seals, fourteen in all. There were one or two
family groups, a number of mated-pairs and some singles. One female had recently
had twins; others had either had a recent pup and were about to ovulate or had
recently ovulated (and were on their own). It seems that having weaned the pup the
female rapidly comes into oestrus, mates and is then fairly solitary for the next
twelve months. Females coming into their first oestrus are also joined by males on
the floes. The floes chosen have conspicuous hummocks, and tracks in the snow
showed that there was a lot of play, chasing and similar behaviour. The male takes
up a position on a hummock from where he can survey the surrounding pack.
The females were covered in bleeding bite wounds on the back and above the
fore-flippers, and especially in the post-lactation females have a somewhat
hunchbacked appearance, because they have lost so much weight while suckling the
pup. Work on other species shows that the female probably loses about 400 lbs, as
the pup grows from about 60 lbs at birth to some 280 pounds at weaning. We also
confirmed the clear distinction between the adult male and female in the profile of
the head; a distinct angle where the snout and crown meet is characteristic of the
male. A silvery colouring seems to be characteristic of the male too.
One male was extremely persistent and when driven off repeatedly returned to
the female, climbed on her back or put his head and flipper on her back. Another
pair was on a very small floe measuring only about 20 by 16 feet, and the male kept
leaping out of the water onto the floe each time we had driven him off. His leaps out
of the water to plump out onto the ice were very agile and fast. The mated-pairs
often take to the water together side by side and emerge - the female first, closely
followed by the male - popping out of the water onto the floe and sliding a few feet
together. Sometimes one can see them in the clear water under a lead, when it is a
graceful ballet. Willy and some of the crew made up a tripod so that we could weigh
the seals killed. The transmitter we left on the floe yesterday was still working - up
to a range of at least twelve miles. (We saw the ‘John Biscoe’ on the horizon on her
way to Punta Delgado, having picked up Giles Kershaw at Damoy and called at
Deception Island to inspect the runway there. I spoke with Giles and Chris and got
the latest BAS information).
At 8 o’clock we made a very interesting observation - a leopard seal on a floe near
what appeared to be a dead and partly eaten seal. Several of us piled into a zodiac
and went out to the floe where we found a 107 inch leopard seal, an immature
female, beside the hind part of a weaned crabeater pup. We shot her and found her
stomach full of pieces of skin and the lanugo (birth hair) of the crabeater. She had
presumably killed in the water and dragged it out onto the floe. Her coat was
beautifully marked, very densely spotted and the dorsal pattern was grey with
lighter grey and black spots except for the middle of the back, which was black. Her
‘shoulders’ looked huge. We returned to the ‘Hero’, on a beautiful evening, very still
and with a line of bright orange tints along the horizon to the west, the grey-white
floes beneath it and deep purple clouds above. Deception Island and
Next day, 9 November, we carried on working in the pack, collecting crabeaters,
using the zodiac to move from the ship to the floes as we sighted the seals. We
collected ten female crabeaters and weighed and tagged three weaned pups. It was
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