One of the coolest ways to learn more about Weddell seals and the work of the Erebus Bay Weddell Seal Population Study is our Weddell Seal Science Instagram page, produced and curated by Sophia Rotella since 2015. Based in Bozeman, MT, she was in middle school when she launched this Instagram page over 10 years ago, and has been doing amazing multimedia outreach work on the Study ever since.
Sophia very successfully developed the Weddell Seal Population Project Instagram program over the years by working with imagery provided by many team members (thanks to all!). With their great images and Sophia’s creativity and knowledge of the project’s science, the account simply exploded in popularity and reach in 2022, with numerous video clips going viral (over 1 million views each), and one video quickly reaching over 40 million views (thanks, Mairan Smith, for your oh-so-popular pup video).
Sophia graduated from Montana State University in 2024, and continues her work with the project today. Most recently, she has been working with the project’s 2025 Field Team members, who have taken pictures and written up so much great material on this year’s biggest pups, to share the team’s efforts on McMurdo Station’s Fat Seal Pup Week with our Instagram audience. Voting is currently underway at McMurdo and Palmer Stations, and we will be posting about Fat Seal Pup Week soon and announcing the 2025 winner in a future blog post.
In addition to her project Instagram work, Sophia works with the project multimedia team to help develop further video and multimedia products with new high quality High Dynamic Range (HDR) 4K video footage and images. She deployed with the Field Team in 2024 working the entire pupping season in the field and also contributing abundant high quality HDR footage and images to the project’s future video and multimedia productions.
Please do check out the Weddell Seal Science Instagram Page!
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