Update From Antarctica for Nov 10, 2025 By Dr. Jay Rotella:

The team has gone to a schedule of around 2 helicopter flights per week to the north side of the Erebus Bay study area and work by snowmobile in the southern half of the study area on the remaining days of the week.

We’ve had a string of beautiful weather days and are making excellent progress on tagging all the pups and associating them with their mothers. The team has now worked repeatedly in the southern colonies and all but a few of the northern colonies. Despite our late start and other challenges, the team has now tagged 570 pups.

It appears that in 2025, the Erebus Bay population will once again produce a number of pups that is above the long-term average. It’s been very interesting to see how the seals have re-distributed themselves this season with the ice edge closer than normal. It seems they’ve done the simple thing of moving back away from the ice edge. And, so far at least, it does not seem that we’ve received an unusually large number of seals from other locations. However, we’ll need more time in the northern part of the study area to confirm that.

– Dr. Jay Rotella
Lead Scientist, Weddell Seal Population Study