Weddell seals and great dives!

Kevin and I have been having a grand week back here in McMurdo. We have been diving at a site we will spend a lot of time at next week and mapping out the location of all of Paul’s old experiments (cages and transects and settling plates). The dive is awesome! I love the huge volcano sponges, you can see why in the photographs.

Nudibranchs mating

Here I am with a big volcano sponge!

Yesterday we took a break from the dives to head out to a spot called Turtle Rock. Stacy and Paul have both worked there in the past and we needed to drill two dive holes out there to start working. Turtle Rock is also totally surrounded by tidal cracks in the sea ice. These can be dangerous to cross, so we had to be very careful. Lucky for us, the driller that came with us is very experienced with sea ice conditions and we just followed behind him the entire time. BUT – with tidal cracks in the ice come seals. Turtle Rock was covered with mamma seals and their damn damn cute little fluffy pups. What an experience! And because Weddell seals have no predators on the ice they don’t care about you wandering around. The other fun sighting was a bird! I have finally gotten some great views of skuas – the one I saw was eating the placenta from a seal birth. Yummy! Sounds like a skua to me!

In the end we were not successful at drilling holes (we drilled a hole down 22 ft. and never hit water because the ice was so thick and there were too many dangerous cracks to get close to the other spot to drill). But the day was gorgeous and it was a real treat to spend some time with the seal pups. Be sure to turn on your volume up to watch the seal videos.

All those dark spots are seals!