Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

following the coast. In my inexperience I found it difficult to distinguish the sexes
other than the large bulls. We did a count of seals on a stretch of coast. Then Ralph
went back to the boat to take Derek home for the Ob.
I ate my lunch and then worked the rest of the Borge Bay coastline, covering
every yard of it. It was evident that it would be possible in future counts to omit
quite large stretches of coast with no places for seals to haul out. Snow petrels and
Cape pigeons were very numerous flying near the cliffs, calling harshly, and every
suitable crack or ledge held their nests. Many had two birds present and I watched
several landing at the nests. Quite a few birds flew down and landed amongst the
brash; they paddled about and drank the seawater, then flew off again.
On the Thule islands southwest of Balin Point, numerous empty limpet shells
seemed to indicate a Dominican gull colony; these birds were very numerous, about
70% being immature. I walked on around the coast to the west of Stygian Cove, but
soon the coast became too steep to provide suitable haul-out places for seals. So I
ended the count just north of the stream from the smallest freshwater lake - later
known as Sombre Lake (because overshadowed by high cliffs). All the freshwater
lakes were frozen and bore my weight. On the largest was a single elephant and
broken ice indicated that more had been there. I could find no trace of crustaceans
although I cut through the ice in several places with my ice-axe. As I walked back to
the beach where I was to meet the others the sun was shining through rifts in the
clouds, lighting up the islands and parts of Coronation with a golden radiance,
which was enhanced by a deep purple sky. I whistled and the others came over the
hillside. While Derek went up to Stygian Cove for more rock specimens Ralph and I
rowed around to Waterpipe Beach to continue the seal count. Porpoising penguins
accompanied us and snow petrels, Cape pigeons and giant petrels flew around with
an occasional Wilson's petrel.
It was getting dark and we finished the census about 6.15 pm, as it was getting
too dark to see the seals. The total was 1,079 for the area north of Orwell Glacier and
as far as the west shore of Stygian Cove. I thought this count was probably fairly
accurate but seals in the sea are difficult to see. It appeared that about 90% of the
seals present were males and of these 441 or roughly 40% were large harem bulls.
There appeared to be few, if any, males and females less than 3 years old. Derek met
us and we rowed back as up to 5,000 shags flew across the bay and circled around
Outer Islet before settling there.
A few days later, after lunch, I completed the seal census for Borge Bay. This
time I walked over to the foot of the Orwell Glacier, but was only able to get about
half way along below the ice-cliffs before the pebble beach ended. The water near the
ice-foot was quite deep, the beach shelving steeply. From my position there I was
able to look along a deep crevasse and for sheer beauty it took a lot of beating. The
walls had numerous glinting convex facets, like chipped glass or flint, each of which
caught the light in a different way. Making my way along the shore I recorded some
interesting observations on elephants and made my count. There were 72 large bulls,
and 123 others of which only 9 were females. Numbers had fallen off in Elephant
Flats, but on Drying Point they were about the same as when we arrived on the
island. Other beaches showed if anything an increase.
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