The research team has been extremely busy for the past several days as the 2010 Weddell seal population field study season gets underway.  And there's much to do! Here's a brief video of some of the recent activities:

The field team travels daily by snowmobile to various destinations in the Weddell seal field study area here in the Erebus Bay region of Antarctica's McMurdo Sound. So flagging the safe routes across the sea ice is an essential part of the field team's work. 

Seals in the study area need to be surveyed, weighed, and tagged, and all that information carefully entered into a database. These data can then be used in a variety of ongoing ecological studies.

Today is a pup survey day. The field team will travel to all the seal pupping areas in the study area on snowmobile to count and record all the new pups of the season.

– Mary Lynn Price