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

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the harem. From this it appeared that bulls can recognize a stronger bull on sight and the roar may be secondary. Weather next day 8 November was bitter at times. I worked on marine biology collections in the morning and went round the harems in the afternoon. In shallow water near the digesters two young bulls were engaged in bouts of mock-fighting. A medium-sized bull and a young cow were gamboling in the water offshore from Pebble Beach. They were striking each other's necks with their chins. Then the male placed its flipper lazily over the cow several times as if in a prelude to copulation; the cow lay quiescent and then both began to play again. I observed a young male asleep in the water off the beach and timed its breathing rhythm. Next day after doing the seal weights and measurements and making other records, I went on round the harems and back via the giant petrel colonies. Some small elephant males were now beginning to appear. It was fine at times with intermittent blizzards. Next day was another foul day and when I went round the harems, the numbers now falling off as cows left. On 11 November the yellow bull was lying 60 yards south of the cemetery and had apparently been eating mud; its mouth was full of it and there was a vile smell. (However, in light of my later observations of elephant seals ‘vomiting’ sand and gravel before they go foraging, this may not have been eating, but voiding before going to sea. I came to believe that they ate gravel and stones when they came ashore to mediate the stomach pangs of a long fast and sicked them up when they went off to sea). All the elephant breeding activity had been on the east side of Signy and when, on 13 November, we went up to the top of Tioga Hill we saw only three elephant seals in Port Jebsen and Cummings Cove. The yellow harem was still on Drying Point. Over the next few days the green bull was present and the yellow bull was still ashore. The former was now very emaciated indeed and held only three cows with two pups in his harem (we were still weighing the elephant pups.) An influx of nonbreeding males had begun, so that there were now 41 medium-sized bulls and four large ones in Stygian Cove and numbers were increasing in the Wallows area. . A week or so later scarred-bull was found in charge of the yellow beach harem. Later he copulated in 2 ft of water with a cow that had left the harem; she escaped and the bull chased her. A new bull, which had been lying ten yards north, now moved up to the harem, but the cows all refused copulation; two of them were snowflipping. The ice foot was so high that scarred-bull would not be able to get back to his harem until the next high tide! The green bull had now given up and moved to the Wallows, 64 days after our first definite sighting and 45 days since he first acquired a harem; he was still fasting – it was astonishing! Over the next two weeks I prepared graphs etc. for my elephant seal Report, writing and typing it and still weighing pups – we added three heavy ones now 270, 280 and 291 lbs, to the records! The breeding season was virtually over and nonbreeding elephants were rapidly increasing in numbers around the shores. It was getting crowded and one morning we even found an elephant seal lying near the Nissen hut. In December 1948 the number of elephants hauled out was increasing I was making various observations on the seals in the bay and on 14 December made a seal count in Borge Bay, finding 1,242 in total, including very few females, but still twelve pups about. On 30 December I counted 107 elephants in Paal Harbour. 265
Chapter 12 Field work on other seals: 1948-50 Weddell seal and pup F our other species of seals were resident or visited Signy Island during our stay. The most abundant was the Weddell seal, Leptonycotes weddellii, a species that occupies a niche mainly in Antarctic coastal waters, breeding on the fast ice as far South as 80ºS but is present as a small land breeding colony at South Georgia. It spends the non-breeding season mainly in the pack ice. Much less frequently we saw leopard seals Hydrurga leptonyx, followed by crabeater seals Lobodon carcinophagus, both of which were pack ice seals. The Ross seal, Ommatophoca rossii has been recorded from the South Orkneys, but we didn’t see any. The fourth species was the Antarctic fur seal, Arctocephalus gazella, essentially a sub-Antarctic species, with a large breeding population at South Georgia; I was pleased to report one individual seen during our stay, the first record since the days of the commercial sealers in the 1800s. (Elephant seal encounters and field work are described in chapter 11). Autumn l948. Soon after our arrival I saw a seal on a growler just offshore and hurried down to the shore over ice and snow-covered slopes on which my rubber boots didn’t grip at all. Once down I had to work along to the point where the growler was aground; all went well until one point, where there was a 60° slope of glistening ice that was impassable. I climbed some steepish rocks and then traversed on very insecure holds across a steep ice bulge. This took me about 20 yards across it until the miniature bergschrund petered out and I was faced with a steep ice slope which was broken 20 feet lower by rocks and snow. I did a sitting glissade and managed to pull up in time to stop myself going over a cliff - lucky in gaining experience at so little cost! The seal on the floe was a 266
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LARGE ANIMALS AND WIDE HORIZONS: AD
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FOREWORD When Richard M. Laws retir
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we might say today and led to deep
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We collaborated with the Royal Navy
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Chapter 1 Northumberland: Boy on th
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occasional nugget for money. The po
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to the cheers of the supporters. Cr
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from the allotments. I can still ta
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From my perspective local politics
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Because we returned each year for s
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uined abbey and a castle on a rocky
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a new lightweight "Raleigh" bicycle
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Chapter 2 Exploring the Lake Distri
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snow, catching the light and shadow
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keen climber and member of the Fell
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irds; stones and rocks abounded and
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The old school buildings were in Cu
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on mycorrhiza (the beneficial close
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inculcated self-reliance and practi
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who came by boat across the lake. S
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need of rest from the incessant air
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matter!" One Saturday in May l941 I
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straightforward until we came to th
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was still another 2 1 2 miles acros
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very strange as he was evidently a
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anything like it, hadn’t the fain
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Chapter 3 A Cambridge Student I tra
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stodgy dried egg omelettes late at
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never saw him because he cut most o
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patrolled the DR. At the end of eac
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Cultural influences at that time Sy
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Reading parties and vacation work I
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Holme, Ken Ashby, Alan Cock, Elspet
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Brian had done some novel work on p
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went up to Topsham and sampled the
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Office. Brian and Colin were biolog
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Islands and the Debenham Islands (i
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observations of their behaviour. I
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I was sorry to miss my elder brothe
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suspected it might have been the re
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The menu was: Soup - Turkey Sage an
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adjust the binocular focus to watch
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On New Year’s Eve it was extremel
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them off the ship, into the launch
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and the others followed in quick su
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in South Georgia and today the stew
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Of bawdy laughter penetrate Unto th
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Will be safe to step on and drink B
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anaesthetic - Pentathol - required
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After a very enjoyable and noisy ev
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chorus girl from Leicester. David a
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The Falkland Islands Then, at 4.45
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Next day I was on galley duty so th
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anchiae, and a large encrusting spo
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meet Derek. They were out but I fou
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was a black terminal band to the ta
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midsummer when some begin to get di
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ehind, about 70 feet above sea leve
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times during l929-1937. In l931/32
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leading to North Point is more or l
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seldom below -12°C. In terms of hu
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the ice faces of the peaks and the
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filled the gaps with wood wool and
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Work continued on the fitting out a
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Hill (907ft). This is the highest p
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A fortnight later, we decided to go
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Giant petrel colonies were numerous
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We cut across Orwell Glacier and ro
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more we set off down - but not befo
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Derek and I had a look at a rock ex
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145
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"the thing that strikes you is that
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Fuchs to arrange for us to be sent
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As to rubbish disposal, the site wa
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lively, questioning mind. He fitted
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specimens, clothes etc. and there w
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ut healed fairly quickly. I caught
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presence of others got one down. In
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Cooking. During the winter we were
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irthday. The birthday cake was very
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11 February l949 was the anniversar
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Edward Wilson, the biologist with C
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fortunate, as apart from a few nove
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4 ft., banking up snow behind some
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173
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eflected in the writing. Summer l94
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1.2°C and +1 °C, there was a cont
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was a touch green in hue. A few sno
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completely broke up the ice in the
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then shot up to -4°C overnight, fa
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sudden deepening from 2 ft to 5 ft
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accessible. We had breakfast and lo
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its fore-flippers. I took a series
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fine sunset effect on the Coronatio
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mauve, violet, purple, deep blue, o
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full of brash ice and small growler
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came in squalls, which tended to pu
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was fitter than the others because
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immatures had been absent for some
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possible to lie full length, even d
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should provide about 4 500 calories
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as was standard practice, because o
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journey of about the same duration
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journey, asking for details. Derek
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It was a misty day when I looked ou
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Page 220 and 221: On 1 August the temperature was -14
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Page 228 and 229: In mid-July we listened to the FIDS
Page 230 and 231: We heard that the "John Biscoe" had
Page 232 and 233: The ships left on 5 December. I was
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Page 236 and 237: to study a very large established e
Page 238 and 239: year. In May 1949 I pursued the pro
Page 240 and 241: specimens back myself under my pers
Page 242 and 243: Swedish-British expedition so as to
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Page 246 and 247: Signy. The leopard is supposed to b
Page 248 and 249: possible. The shore here was deeply
Page 250 and 251: and it was then time for lunch. The
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Page 254 and 255: unpleasant and salutary incident il
Page 256 and 257: while I watched for an hour in a sn
Page 258 and 259: the webs. As Ralph walked away all
Page 260 and 261: Cow ‘green 7’ flipped snow onto
Page 262 and 263: (medical) stretcher to weigh the el
Page 264 and 265: another bull approached to some 60
Page 268 and 269: Weddell - probably a 3-yr old femal
Page 270 and 271: cleaned the skin; lighting a fire a
Page 272 and 273: Two other females seemed to be ‘e
Page 274 and 275: proved to be pregnant. Next day a m
Page 276 and 277: mother had a large bloodstained sca
Page 278 and 279: attle-scarred males. There appeared
Page 280 and 281: side to side on the pup’s body as
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Page 286 and 287: The only other birds were the Antar
Page 288 and 289: In the next few days we watched Dom
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Page 300 and 301: I began to construct what I called
Page 302 and 303: A week later, penguins were still a
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Page 306 and 307: e sure of identification in future.
Page 308 and 309: lew about all over the place. They
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we helped with the feeding process,
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in order to introduce the species t
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wine, examples of Madeira needlewor
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and visited each other in our respe
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several years published a short pap
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about obtaining registration for th
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She had been thinking about visitin
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got up to go he said, "Oh, by the w
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a grazing tussock beetle was the cu
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showed up startlingly. We put the s
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‘hairy’ fringe over the cliff e
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New Island, Beaver Island and Wedde
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where we still hoped to land, weath
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The evening passed quickly with tea
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and then headed towards Albemarle R
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were towed back to the station and
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This was the first station to be es
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dryers, the guano store, would be f
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Hestesletten of Mt Paget (2915m) an
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and the light administrative duties
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on the rocks. We launched the dingh
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(formerly to Lever Bros.). The wind
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Most of the charts of South Georgia
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flensed from the seal in eight stri
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However, the chart appeared to be s
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to the almost landlocked inner bay.
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lock of rock. We erected the two te
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ow back to Grytviken along the oute
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the cows red-tail. Two of the cows
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(bull O) had 14 cows and 2 pups. Bu
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In area 10 there was one harem of 2
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1 October was a fine morning with l
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In area 6 several cows had hauled o
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them a most interesting monster - S
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There were two harems in area 11, o
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the cows and creates a bank in the
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Then the pup slid out in a rush at
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Discovery Point and more extensive
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depart on the first visit of Biscoe
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of it, although her motor boat made
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The South Georgia Survey team had h
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397
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for lunch on the way for steaks and
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An Arctic Voyage. A friend from ear
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We did three bottom temperature cas
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gone to a dentist in England - anot
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As the trawlers lay all night gutti
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At that time FIDS had no future job
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411
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cutters of 30 to 40 tons that were
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eginning of April, but since Novemb
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and 316 kg of meat and bone meal. F
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the total annual catch. But a decli
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were stable and natural mortality r
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population - the initial cohort - w
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so far. In fact the average oil yie
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In 1963 sub-let its lease to the in
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In the event, when I became Directo
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departure was delayed and we weren'
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There was not too much to do and I
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On 30 November, a few hours sailing
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equivalent to one blue whale, two f
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sperm whale work. Worked till eight
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time on the whaling grounds. We had
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from the stern. One was hauled aboa
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oil and yesterday the expedition
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say, to avoid going over the side,
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was a bitterly cold wind on deck. I
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long low black cloud on the horizon
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uoy, with a wire loop through which
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managed to avoid the ice floes; had
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word because they told me that it s
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Then to Haut Bay, which was very be
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keen sense of humour and stimulatin
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Taking a picnic we drove to Carvoer
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illiantly coloured and the calcite
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Because of the Navy's great interes
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Arthur Stride, was a marine geologi
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work on Balaena. and would be bette
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In l958 I was an invited speaker at
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Molde and had lunch at the hotel. T
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patches of sun. The ferry called at
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479
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Scotland and the Hebrides, about my
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Next day Brenda was off Rona at mid
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We spent a little time that day on
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cleft in the rocks - it was unable
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inspected the landing place to asce
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