Seal Training - Part 1

March 7, 2009

No, not SEAL training...

Signed up for the Point Reyes Harbor Seal Monitoring volunteer work. Basically our "job" is to go out to certain area and count Harbor Seals at their haul out sites (where they come up onto the beach in droves and lay about in the sun), noting various seal types (Harbor Seals but possibly Sea Lions and Elephant Seals), how many Harbor Seals - adults and pups, (apparently pupping season is about now), live ones, dead ones, any disturbances (hikers, predators, etc).

Today was our first training, learning about Harbor Seals and how the counting is going to go. Apparently there are so many seals at particular points, that you have to use a clicker. Look through the binoculars and sort of take in groups of seals and click away as your eye glances over each seal body. Apparently you just can't keep the count in your head when seeing numbers like that. And they can get up into the top hundreds, even a thousand or more animals.

I learned that Harbor Seals are pinipeds (flippered critters) and do not have articulated spines like Elephant Seals or Sea Lions. Apparently this type of spine allows a piniped to bend the spine and sit up, like you see most seals doing. As Harbor Seals do not have this type of spine, they are kind of like worms, sort of inching and flopping about but cannot bend their bodies to sit in half.

I also learned that we have the highest concentration of "red" animals in the world. This phenomenon has been showing up lately of animals with rusted red colored fur. They aren't actually sure why it occurs and it doesn't seem to affect the animal in question other than having more brittle whiskers than normals seals. They do think it might have something to do with iron and the fur, although not from within the seal. Well, the iron that is. Whatever is in the seal that makes it easy for the iron to glom onto the fur. Or something like that.

The next step is to actually go out into the field and see the haul out sites with the trainers and then do a secondary, final training with a senior counter/volunteer.

Bring on the Seals!