Met Eish 02

MetEish2

17 March 2010

Ferocious weather this morning. Lots of snow got in through a gap above Nico’s Tomato door and so stuck to and froze several bits of clothing inside.

18 March 2010

We opened our elephant seal satellite-tagging account: after a bit of a longwinded (I genu-inely believe Nico did not intend this pun.. [checked, and no I really didn’t!]) immobilisation

with Horst’s blowpipe dart technique we nailed the boy with our trusted South African method and Ketamine. A technical note (for Sealers only), no gauze, no cable ties and very neat, small epoxy patch (well hatched)! Back by 17:30 which precipitated a lot of beer and some “scientific discussion”.

19 March 2010

Woke to snow falling and dead calm outside. Deployment chances were always going to be low because the snow soaks the animals and we can’t glue the satellite tags to wet fur.

As we walked the snow was joined by some wind and it became quite bad weather. We took a break in the Refugio, or “Puti Klub” - a big hut near Stranger Point, called this for unclear rea-sons. We’d rather not know the details... “Puti” has something to do with prostitutes. I’m sure

Issue Two: 17 - 26 March 2010

View of Potter Cove with Jubany on the left and Tres Hermanos behind. RR

we’ll receive some clarification/admonishment from our Spanish readers. We spotted a beautiful young leucistic Antarctic fur seal male on our way back.

20 March 2010

The weather was pretty terrible today, some serious wind and heavy snow drift so that one cannot see a thing when walking around outside! Quite impressive (and more comfortable)

to observe through a window. Which is what we did.

A table tennis tournament was orgainized in the base and we were all entered by default. De-spite Nico’s rustiness, he managed to pull through and win his first match to progress to the

second round. We were unsure about the score and other finer details as the tournament was conducted in Spanish. Ryan was the better player in his game (Nico wrote that) but unfortunately lost the match. Saturday night, and the pizza tradition holds!

21 March 2010 (Happy Birthday Ryan!)

A calm and very cold day (~ -8C) without wind. Loads of ice on the beaches and many icebergs offshore. Tough walking in some parts where the snow had accumulated tremendously.

Many massive bulls around but all the biggest are in the larger groups, so not yet accessible for immobilisation. Many have not re-grown enough hair to stick the tags to. Successfully deployed

Horst Bornemann, Nico de Bruyn, Jochen Plötz and Ryan Reisinger. Trust the South Africans to get their faces covered in snow. RR & NdB

on two smaller bulls away from the large aggregations. Our drinking water caused ice cream headaches as it started freezing in the bottles. At the last headland the tide was already a bit high and Nico misjudged the waves and got pretty soaked. Thanks to Taiga, not quite as soaked as to be expected after being waist-deep in the sea! If only he’d used his Moses-walking stick! Back at base we enjoyed some cake (thanks, Sanja!) for Ryan’s birthday.

22 March 2010

Wind and snow everywhere again: -9°C without windchill. Too much snow for deploy-ment. In the middle of lunch all the Argentineans sprinted out of the dining room

and outside into the snow.... and the rest of us realised someone had said “fuego” (fire). A piece of the new (uninhabited, fortunately) base was on fire. General pandemonium en-sued; fortunately snow shovelling and fire extinguishers did the trick. The new base has a hole burnt through it and blackened walls. Quite some damage from the outside so there must be serious damage on the inside where a heater had caused the fire. Nico played his quarter-final ping-pong match against Patrick (one of the German scientists) and won 11-6, 11-7. Nico’s “attrition ping-pong” (as Ryan calls it), did the trick obviously. He spoils the rhythm of the opponent with tricky shots. In the semi’s Nico faced the reigning cham-pion and his run of good form (good luck?) ended, but, to be fair, he had consumed a few beers. It was hard to judge whether his performance would have been better or worse without these.

23 March 2010

Cold (-10°C), but with the first sunshine of the expedition. Headed past the Puti Klub and found a big bull (more than 4m in length) for deployment. Our Zolitil dose did not

get him down completely but Nico managed to get the towel (to cover his eyes) over his head and then hold his huge head... applying slight pressure to his eyes to keep him calm when he wanted to move. Jochen, who had been taking video and would catch up, finally caught up, but unfortunately stepped through the ice covering a large lake of elephant seal shit and so was waist deep in the below freezing liquid mixture! Luckily we had some dry socks for him but he had to walk straight back to avoid freezing. We looked for other animals but they were not in good positions.

24 March 2010

Headed out to all the large groups of ellies... “The Fermenters”, then on to the “Puti Boys” (which contains over 50, tightly packed, BIG moulting bulls) and finally to the

“Gentoo Hill” group. Although there were several animals that were ready for deployment,

Top: A leucistic Antarctic fur seal. Bottom: taking refuge in the Puti Klub. Both RR

One of the Puti Boys. RR

we could not access any of them and they were in one of their settled moods, so they would not move. On our way back, we had a fantastic sighting of our first ever crabeater seal – a very small one. In the afternoon the sun really came out and blue skies appeared. We went for a short walk and saw another crabeater seal.

25 March 2010

Heavy wind, squalls of wet snow and seaspray. Found one young (6 year old) male a bit to the side with a group of small adult females. Whacked him with Zolitil, but while

we chased other bulls around him away he became a bit excited, so we had to top him up with ketamine. He was down in a moment and we successfully deployed, but had to wait for more than two hours before he became properly responsive. Attempting to dig a snow cave while waiting kept us warm, only because of the activity, though, as the “cave” was about 30 cm deep. There was great unrest among the Puti Boys: tempers flared and teeth were bared. On our turn it was into the teeth of the wind back to base. Stiff walk but nothing like a bit of proper wind to lift one’s spirits. Meatroll and cold rice for dinner... the Argies seem to enjoy cold rice, but we’re worried if we pop it into the microwave we’ll cause offense.

26 March 2010

Rainy weather, which made deployment impossible. Spanish tip for the day: you can use as many English words as you want, just be sure to precede them with a few

Spanish ones, then all of a sudden you are well understood!

So our tally to date is 5 out of 15 deployments done, more than 120 bulls still around, but in inaccessible bunches for the moment. “Met Eish 3” will reveal……

Top: Nico’s Tomato is the middle one. Bottom: a crabeater seal buries its nose in the snow. NdB & RR

Disclaimer

This time we accept some responsibility for the content of this newsletter, but we still can’t vouch for the grammar or spelling.

Thanks!

We’d like to thank the Academy, our fami-lies, Marthán and the Sealers, the Mammal Research Institute, the Alfred Wegener In-stitute and our sponsors, Taiga and Hevea (Dunlop).

Write to us

If your continental friends are busy...

[email protected]@zoology.up.ac.za

Nico de Bruyn (CTD & Consulting editor) and Ryan Reisinger (MGD & Editor in Chief)

www.taiga.sewww.dunlopboots.com

Jochen and Horst on their way out. NdB.