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

flensed from the seal in eight strips. In my time, when seals were possibly less
plentiful, it was more usual for them to be killed at irregular intervals as the
sealers walked along the beach. A hauler remained with each skin to attach it to
the pram, before moving on to help with another seal. Only at the end of a
voyage, when it was difficult to store complete skins in the vessel’s hold, was the
blubber taken off in more than one piece. In that event two strips were flensed off
the back and sides, and when the seal had been rolled over another strip was
taken off the ventral surface.
The gunner was responsible for seeing that the work was done safely and
efficiently and he decided which seals were too small to kill. He was a man of
great strength and energy, putting his hand to everything. He was usually last
into and first out of the pram. A sealing captain and his gunner customarily
worked together for many years and developed their own system of signs for
communication between ship and shore.
To return to our immediate situation in Undine Harbour: the motor-boat and
large pram dinghy were lowered and I joined the nine sealers who went ashore
through the surf. On the lengthy beach and in the tussac behind we found only
one bull, which was sixteen feet long, large enough to take. The beater drove it
down the beach, backwards, by tapping it on the snout with his metal rod – a
condenser tube from the whaling station. There, at the water's edge, the Gunner
shot it with an l890 model Krag Jorgensen rifle, delivering a .458 bullet. With their
large, wonderfully sharp, Swedish Eskilstuna knives, the sealers made the cuts
down the back, round the neck and the flippers, and flensed the blubber off in one
roughly circular piece. A rope strop was threaded through a hole where the
flipper had been and tied to a rope from the pram. This was then rowed out by the
Norwegian seaman, who had remained in her just offshore – outside the breakers
– to the motor boat which towed it and the blubber to the ship.] I collected my
specimens for research while the seal was being flensed, assisted by one of the
sealers – measured the body length and blubber thickness, collected a tooth for
age determination, took parts of the reproductive tract, and testis weight. I
examined the stomach contents and sampled any other bits and pieces as time and
conditions allowed. (To augment my collection of female material I had a special
permit to take some females, to collect ovaries, embryo or foetus.) I also made
counts of the seals, particularly cows and pups.
The carcass was left on the shore and we walked along the beach, looking for
more seals, but seeing only six undersized males, we returned to the ship for
lunch around noon. The anchor was raised and then we moved on along the bleak
coast, steaming close inshore and looking out for seal. Past Coal Harbour and
Schlieper Bay and into Ice Fjord we scurried in deteriorating weather. We landed
ashore at North Bay; the wind increased and a heavy sea wet us all pretty
thoroughly as we passed through the surf and leapt ashore. We got one fourteen
foot elephant, which I examined as the sealers were working, fitting in with their
procedure. There were also five small ones, and several skeletons, picked clean by
the giant petrels, which testified to a previous visit by sealers. Returning to the
ship at 3 o’clock we crossed to Middle Bay, cruising inshore to South Bay. Seal
were seen on the beach there, so the boats were launched and we piled in again
and were towed ashore.
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