We’re back – And we have so much to share with you

by Katie Sweeney on 13 Aug 2017 Researchers studying Steller sea lions in Alaska have added new images to the Steller Watch project, through which volunteers can help count sea lions in aerial photos. The data collection will help scientists work toward a solution to the continued decline of Steller sea lions in the Aleutian Islands.

The Steller sea lion field season is over and everyone has returned to the office, hard at work processing and analyzing data, and writing up reports.

I was fortunate to participate on the research cruise and the re-sight trip. Despite some challenging weather, we were very successful and productive! We also saw a lot of amazing things along the way. Though I had a great time during my four weeks away, I have to admit I’m pretty excited that I won’t have to share tight living quarters with several other people until next year!

During the research cruise on the M/V Ti?lâx, two big goals we had were to look for previously marked animals (like those you all are looking for on Steller Watch) and to visit a select group of sites to count sea lions. These sites were missed during last year’s Aleutian Islands abundance survey. This means, I was able to fly six sites with our new co-pilot!

We also visited three sites and marked almost 300 pups for our long-term life history study: Gillon Point (Agattu Island, “~” symbol), Hasgox Point (Ulak Island, “>” symbol), and Ugamak Island (“A” letter). Handling and working with these large sea lion pups (weighing 70-110 lbs) is a lot of work but an amazing experience. In the first image (below, left picture) you can see a pup that fell asleep while hanging in the net during weighing!

After weighing, the two pup handlers carefully move the pup to the veterinarian’s station where she applied gas anesthesia until the pup fell asleep. During this time, we collect samples and apply the mark. These pups were then released to the recovery area where we kept a watchful eye to insure they were fully awake and mobile. In the right picture, you can see small square patch of fur has been shaved off. This fur sample is used to measure contaminants, such as mercury.

Maintenance of and downloading images from our remote cameras were other important goals during the cruise: we collected 245,972 images from 17 of the 20 sea lion remote cameras. For the last two years we haven’t been able to access two of the cameras at Cape Wrangell (Attu Island) due to large waves at the landing site.

To read more, please see StellerWatch.

To read more about their different trips and scientific goals for each trip, check out their previous Steller Watch blog.