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

We finished the census at 6.15 pm when it was getting too dark to see the seals.
The total was 1,055 for the area north of Orwell Glacier and as far as the west shore of
Stygian Cove. I thought this count was reasonably accurate but there were numbers
of seals in the sea or wallows, which were difficult to count. About 90% of the seals
present were males and of these 441 or roughly 40% were large harem bulls. It was
difficult to distinguish males and females below 3 years old. I was still very
inexperienced and occasionally I was able to see from the genitals of an individual I
had classed as a male, that it was actually a female – or vice versa.
Sporadic ‘fighting’, chiefly between smaller seals continued. In most cases it
seemed more play than fight and the pair would swim off together gamboling. In
other cases the thrusts and bites appeared to be vicious and the number of animals
with fresh wounds seemed to bear this out. One medium-sized female bore two 9inch
gashes on either side of her neck which were still bleeding and looked freshly
inflicted.
After lunch on 3 April I completed a seal count for Borge Bay. Making my way
along the shore I recorded some interesting observations on elephants and made a
careful 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. Other beaches showed if anything an increase.
I tried out some thinned cellulose paint (for marking elephant seals) in my spray.
Using the yellow paint, I marked a big bull elephant behind the digesters – as well as
some sheathbills – but it looked as though I would end up using a brush at the end of
a long rod! Of course I was well spattered with yellow paint myself by the time I had
finished.
Next day I made a seal count on south coast and found that the western half of
Clowes Bay contained no suitable beaches for elephants and anyway a count would
only be possible from the sea, because of heavily crevassed glacier ice and steep rock
cliffs. Accordingly I turned back and extended the count north-east from where I had
started, to cover the entire coast up to northern Oliphant Islets. In this bay there was
a dense accumulation of ice floes and I counted no less than 17 Weddells and one
leopard. Total elephants on the count: 33 large males; 101 others, mostly male; total
Weddells 18. There were 63 elephants in Paal Harbour.
A week later there were only 70 elephant seals in Paal Harbour (10 large, 8
medium and 52 small males) and next day I decided to do a seal census around the
north-west coast. Ralph rowed me northwards inside Billie Rocks, and I began the
count in a cove to the east of North Point where the coast became more or less
impassible and steep due to the bulk of Robin Peak. I walked along the coast, which
was for the most part devoid of suitable beaches for elephant seals. At the headlands
between the bays there was often a string of islands or rocks jutting out to sea, the
innermost of the series being usually connected to land by a low-lying shingle beach,
which formed a suitable hauling out area for elephants. Apart from a few stray
individuals all the elephants I counted were confined to these beaches. Seal numbers
were apparently slightly less than before and there were 110 on the stretch of coast I
covered.
On 13 April I resumed the count on the south coast. After inspection through
binoculars it all looked very impassable so I began at the cliffs of Confusion Point
and worked round westwards to Cummings Cove covering as much of the coast as
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