Elephant Seals

After a few days at sea I was glad of the opportunity to go ashore at Signy. During the summer this base is occupied by a small contingent of BAS personnel including a biologist, field assistant (mountaineer), technician, base commander and assorted visiting scientists including glaciologists, microbiologists and climatologists. During the winter it is unoccupied, so at the end of each research season it is closed down and prepared for winter. This includes empting and shutting down frozen food stores, switching off the reverse-osmosis plant that supplies fresh water, winterising generators and communications equipment and even draining the sewage system to prevent damage during the long winter. Fortunately Matt, the base commander, has overseen this process every season for almost 10 years, and has refined it to a slick and efficient operation that can be done over the course of a couple of days with the help of a few of the ships company.

One of the final steps is closing the base is the installation of heavy metal shutters over the windows to prevent storm damage. In order to do this the resident contingent of elephant seals must be herded away from the base. It turns out that this is no easy task.

Until our arrival at Signy my experience of elephant seals had been limited to the occasional encounter on the beaches around Bird Island. Here, amongst the squabbling fur seals, ellies can be found slumbering peacefully, piled together in slug-like heaps of two or three. These are often juvenile males or young females who come ashore to rest or to moult. Their gentle, sedentary nature is very different from the more aggressive furries and I was able to spend many happy times posing for photographs with them, often venturing close enough to stroke their velvety flippers. The elephant seals tolerate drather than enjoyed this attention; watching us with huge unblinking eyes and sighing patiently as we interrupted their quiet meditation on the beach.

Jon displaying some expert seal-wrangling skills

The Signy elephant seals are mainly full-grown males who like to lie in massive heaps pied up against the walls of the base away from the sea-ice and sheltered from the prevailing wind. I was not at all prepared for the enormous size of these beasts, each of which can weigh 3000kg and raise himself up to over six feet high when on dry land. As I rounded the corner of the generator shed I was met by a steaming mountain of seal blubber that periodically re-arranged itself with much bickering, biting and general posturing as each of these potential beach-masters vied for their preferred position. There was an overpowering smell of farmyard mixed with rotten fish and the ground underfoot was slick with with seal scat.

Huge and cumbersome, these animals lack the skeletal articulation that would enable them to sprint across dry land as fur seals can. However, they soon showed themselves able to lunge with surprising swiftness and accuracy when approached too closely. They also displayed a remarkable reluctance to move. In fact, this reluctance would be more accurately interpreted as absolute refusal. A crack team of seal wranglers was soon assembled and we approached the seal-mountain armed with specialised seal-moving equipment. To the untrained observer this may have looked like a bunch of lunatics shouting and clapping while waving flags and bamboo canes. We, however, prided ourselves in our expertise and experience and knew that we represented the world’s elite in terms of seal wrangling. The seals, however, seemed sadly uninformed of this fact and were clearly unimpressed by our efforts. We persisted with shouting and clapping and eventually progressed to poking, prodding and occasionally slapping in order to gain the ellies’ attention. Slowly, grudgingly they began to move. We continued our exertions, working ourselves into a frenzy of yelling, waving and prodding. This was met with distain by the seals, who rolled their huge, liquid eyes in our direction and, insultingly, went back to sleep. Undeterred we redoubled our efforts, by now sweating and steaming in the freezing air. Finally we managed to rouse them from their slumber and persuade them, one by one, to move away from their cosy resting spot. As they lumbered past they shot looks of resentment in our direction, clearly unimpressed by the disruption to their daily routine. Once again I was reminded that the human residents of Antarctica are uninvited guests in a land that rightly belongs only to those who are perfectly adapted to life in this harsh and beautiful environment.