| Working with Harbour Seal Pups |
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| For Jen and Jay to gather their data seals had to captured. Once a mother and pup were spotted the zodiac would chase them down and caputure the pup in a hoop net. Since the seals are young the don't swim very fast and cannot dive for long periods of time. It is not overly difficult, but it does required tecnique and practice. Sometimes the mother was captured also. As seen in the picture to the right. They would hold the young one by the flipper over the edge of the boat and the mother would be drawn to the crys for help. Once close enough she could be scooped up and hauled into the zodiac. Sometimes she would jump right in on her own. |
| Some seals were equiped with radio transmitters which allowed us to tack their movements and recapture them. Once captured they were resampled to see the diffence between stages of growth. You can see Jen and Jay in the picture to the left tracking a seal pup. It was initally difficult since the "beebing" is only heard when the seal surfaces and once the seal dives it usually changes direction. We eventually found a technique that worked for us. |
| During my month stay at Institute Maurice LaMontaine I worked with a group of graduate students from the Univeristy of Waterloo. The four J's they were called. The two masters students Jennifer who was working on breathing behavior, Jay who was working on hormone production while diving, Jason their advisor and Jeff their summer intern who had just graduated from the University of Guelph in marine biology. |
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| The harbour seals were subjected to a number of samplings. Once in the boat they were drugged with ~1cc of valium, blood was drawn for the hormonal studies, skin was collected at the base of the flipper for genetics, breathing rate, heart rate was also monitored. Some seals were equipped with the vhf transmitter as previously mentioned and dive depth recorders. A select few had "pills" inserted into their stomach to record stomach temperatures. They were then given a distict head tag for catch and release (observe) studies and a permanent flipper tag. Once all data has been collected the pup was released and watched to make sure it reunited with their mothers. |
| Mother and young pup |