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

ull coming out of the sea at one harem was cautiously looking to see the size of the
harem bull, who looked round out of the corner of an eye but didn’t consider it
necessary to move, whereupon the other departed.
There were seven harems in area 1. Bull J had the largest, containing 50 cows and
26 pups. I saw a cow give birth – tail first again and the afterbirth voided about a
minute later. Bull H heads the largest fixed harem in area 8 – with 59 cows and 20
pups. 8e had 96 cows, but there are several moving away and other encroaching
bulls. The bull of 11a was on the beach rounding up 2 cows. One cow of this harem
had moved 60 yards south-east with her pup.
Area 12 was still complicated. That morning bull F was on the beach with 27
cows and 14 pups, but later I watched him rounding up cows from inland and
attempting to copulate. None of the cows were ready. The other bulls kept away, so
evidently he still controlled the whole harem complex. His nose was festering badly
and looked a glutinous bloody mass. Moreover he appeared to have lost much of his
vitality.
After lunch I went to harem 6b where I had a lively time killing and examining a
date-marked cow. The bull (E) chased me repeatedly, and I was forced to give up,
before obtaining all the data and material I needed. At times like these I realised how
much safer and easier it would have been with a helper.
Then I went to harem 12 and killed a yellow-nose cow, date-marked, with a 10 day
old pup. Her ovaries showed two large follicles approaching ovulation (just like a
cow of 11 days I collected at Signy Island). It appeared that post-partum activity
began after about 10 days. I returned to camp at 4 o’clock and started the genny,
wrote up the data sheets and transferred specimens to osmic acid.
7 October was for a change, another fine day with little wind and much
sunshine. There were many more small harems forming now, many without ‘owner’
bulls. The number of bulls still seemed to be constant. I asked myself: did bulls know
they would get no sexual satisfaction until the cows were ready to mate? - or are
there really so few bulls throughout the season? Many must be in the sea. Possession
of a harem does not signify, for a small bull may still challenge a large one.
It was very warm and many of the bulls with harems near the water were in the
water preventing the cows from escaping. The bulls lay head-on to the beach. A new
cow joined harem 1d and the bull rounded her up in shallow water. Further along 3
cows lay in the surf, basking; the bull rounded one up and she was more or less
acquiescent, except for occasional bursts of activity. The bull pushed her like a tug at
a liner (or more like a liner at a tug), the cow making little effort to swim away, but
occasionally snapped at the bull and ducked underwater. Another bull came along in
the water; the bull of 1d, looked along his back, arching his head backwards, and
roared, whereupon the other departed. Three of the harem bulls on beach 1 were
now in the water. So was bull C in area 8 and F in area 12, the former just offshore.
His back was out of the water because he was lying on the bottom, and he splashed
water on it from time to time, the action being the same as flipping snow or stones.
About 50% of the cows were flipping that day, stones, pebbles etc., as well as many
of the pups, some only a day or two old. The action digs great holes on either side of
384