Macquarie Island expeditioners completed the all-island elephant seal population survey count, cameras in hand.

Macca all-island elephant seal population survey count

Last week we completed a major activity involving most people on station and four separate field trips. Each year the TASPAWS rangers undertake an all-island population count census of the breeding population of elephant seals. This needs to be done within a narrow date range of a few days only at the peak of the seal breeding activity in mid-October. With the reduced number of people on station this year, TASPAWS rangers Chris and Mike were very keen to get as many people as possible to assist. There was no shortage of hands put up, with the opportunity of getting to some rarely visited and very beautiful parts of the island coastline within restricted entry Specially Managed Areas, in order to perform the count.

As well as the one-off all island count, the survey includes daily counts for two weeks of the animals on the east and west coasts of the isthmus near station, where huge numbers of seals congregate. This alone takes several hours daily. After we all finished amusing ourselves saying “seal census survey on the isthmus” with a lisp pretending to be a well known media personality, we worked out a plan with Mike and Chris. Chris and Graeme would count along the southern half of the west coast (the most rugged part of the island’s coastline) from Hurd Point to Aurora Point, Mike and Meg would count the southern half of the east coast from Hurd Point to Green Gorge, Ian and Greg would count the northern half of the west coast from Aurora Point to station, and Ivor, Benny and Sean would count the northern half of the east coast from Green Gorge to station. Each of these would take two to three days to count with another day or two for travelling at one or both ends. Others — including Evelyn, Scotty, Paul, Keon, Ryan and Pete — would do the daily isthmus counts.

The plan came together nicely last week. After a few days of typical Macca weather early in the week, the latter part of the week was beautiful and we all enjoyed our beach walks a great deal. Each harem, varying in size from two or three animals to five or six hundred, was counted and waypointed on GPS. We haven’t finalised the count yet but to give an idea, the northern half of the east coast alone from Green Gorge to the start of the isthmus near station had 55 harems totalling 3630 breeding animals. Over the years, the counts are revealing a slow and gradual decline in numbers, which is a worrying trend. The reasons are not fully understood but this highlights the importance of monitoring the population size.

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