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

Four days later I went over to Drying Point with the plane-table to make a plan
for use in plotting seal positions and movements during the elephants’
breeding season. By now there were three Weddells at a berg in Paal Harbour
(one with a pup) and seven cows and five pups by Outer Islet. In the afternoon
of 26 September we went over to Gourlay and marked twenty pups; I sent a
signal to all bases asking them to look out for tagged Weddells.
On 3 October I saw a Weddell bull eating ice in a blowhole, but I couldn’t decide
whether it was for water intake or for indigestion! There was a number of
Weddell pups at North Point at the end of October, and when standing at the
edge of the cliff above a still pool of open water an adult swam along below. Its
motion was supremely graceful and apparently effortless; the hind-flippers were
not pressed together but held out apart, parallel and vertical, behind. Probably
they act as stabilizers held this way and prevent rolling. The fore-flippers were
ad pressed to the body, for streamlining.
On 1 December I chased a young crabeater on Drying Point and found it had a
surprising turn of speed; I had difficulty in keeping up with it in the deep snow.
On 9 January l950, a leopard appeared after lunch and swam along just offshore.
Charlie and I went down to Berntsen Point to see it and he got some
photographs, but it went off before I could change the film in my camera. Next
day there was no sign of it, but the day after that it swam along the shore below
us. The next weeks were pretty fully occupied preparing for our departure and
there were no further significant encounters with seals.
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