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

The cows squabbled among themselves and occasionally bit an intruding pup. A
pup on its own would make for the nearest seal and didn't appear to recognize its
own mother. One that had been tagged went up to the bull, which was lying on his
side, and began to search for a nipple. The monster roared and reared up, but the
pup was persistent and eventually the bull moved away a few yards. Three of the
females had recent wounds on their rumps, inflicted by the him. When fighting
amongst themselves they seemed to use the weight of their body rather than their
teeth; usually this lunge meant that they struck their opponent on her chest with
either their chin or head. Frequently they slyly bit other females when they weren't
looking! One young silvery-grey cow, which looked to me like a virgin (ie small and
slim) was lying a little way from the main clump. No other bulls were present in the
vicinity of the harem.
On 13 October the only change in the composition of the yellow harem was a
new pup, weighing 107 pounds. Born overnight, there was considerable fresh blood
on the snow. We weighed and measured other pups; also those in the green harem,
whose bull was lying at the end of the inlet from Starfish Bay. Two other bulls were
on the sea ice; one of them bleeding badly about the head, lay further away. A cow
elephant well out towards the ice edge, was heading inshore.
Next day we saw no change in the green harem and the green bull was in
Starfish Bay on the sea ice. When I went over to check and saw tracks leading around
the point I followed them and found a second bull lying on the sea ice, south of
Berryhead, but without fresh scars. The third bull from the previous day was north of
Stygian Cove near the eastern of the two islets. I returned around the outside of the
rocks at the point and found the green bull was no longer there – he was now on the
sea ice just around the corner. Although I waited for a long time to see if he would
pursue the other bull, he showed no signs of moving and was still there when I left.
The yellow harem was by now on the ridge of Drying Point, and its composition had
not changed.
Later I skied out to the harems on the ice-edge, passing a large unmarked bull off
Observation Bluff. The red bull was absent from his harem and I found him later at
the blue harem with four cows and two pups; the paint had worn badly but numbers
1 and 2 could just be distinguished. The cows were scattered and the red bull lay 10
yards to the west of them. Another bull lying 100 yards to the south-east turned out
to be the blue bull. I took compass bearings from the two harems in order to fix their
positions. One bull was lying near Shag Rock and another bull with a cow and pup
adjacent lay in the middle of the bay to the north-west.
A violent blizzard continued throughout most of the next day, 15 October, and I
worked in the lab during the morning, skinning a dead pup I had collected; it would
be useful for dissections of anatomical detail. Although on cook duty, I went out to
see the nearby elephants in the afternoon. Both harems were complete but there was
no sign of the spare bulls. The pups appeared to be unaffected by the severity of the
weather; five were sheltered by their mothers, two weren’t; one pup was sucking on
the windward side of its mother. All were equally resentful of disturbance. The
driven snow and ice covered muzzles and heads in a thick mask of ice. It was a
rigorous introduction to a harsh world! I could see no trace of the harems on the sea
ice and open water now extended north of Shag Rock.
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