Nicole Teutschel at Año Nuevo State Reserve, CA -- The E-Seal Team is working overtime to finish deploying 22 tags on a new group of female elephant seals. So far we’ve gotten 19 tagged: only three to go!

Tagging the elephant seals is very different from recovering them. The E-Seal Team must search the beaches for flipper tagged females, which can be a challenge!

Every season, we put flipper tags on many weaners. These little green tags let researchers keep track of individual animals throughout their lifetime. For the last 30 years, researchers have hiked the beaches nearly every day to record the green tags they find on seals. Here's a cool map of Año Nuevo and the beaches where the seals live. So, we have 30 years of data about seals' lives from Año Nuevo. This database can be used to keep track of individuals, harems and the changes in populations over the years.

This weaner's flipper tag reads "T812". For the rest of this seal's life, we will use this tag to keep track of her and identify her.

Over the last few weeks, the E-Seal Team has been searching for the perfect candidates to put satellite tags on. The ideal seal has thick fur that’s good for gluing, has a known age in our database, has been sighted at Año Nuevo before, is skinny and has a big pup. Being skinny and having a big pup means she's ready to stop nursing her pup and leave the beach. This can be a tall order when wading through the seals at Año. There are so many animals that even if we find one, she could be in a tough spot, such as smack dab in the middle of a large harem. So far, we’ve been lucky.
We put a satellite tag on this female "M778" on Tuesday. You can see the dye mark on her left side that helped us to find her. She was marked with her flipper tag ID number last June after the molt -- you can barely see the green tag on her back flipper in this photo. She's also pretty skinny, noticeable by the wrinkles around her neck. She's used up her fat reserves to feed her big pup, who's ready to be weaned.

The tagging procedure itself is similar to the recovery procedure. We take the same length and girth measurements, blood samples, and weigh her. While the seal is still under anesthesia, we attach the tags using a special glue called epoxy, the same stuff you fix your surfboard with. After the glue is set, we bring the animal out of anesthesia and watch as she either returns to her harem for her last few days at the beach, or in the case of "1261" below, whom we tagged on Wednesday, heads out to sea.

This particular seal was undulating towards the ocean when we found and tagged her. She had already mated and was ready to go! After we put on the tags and made sure that she was awake enough to fend for herself in the ocean, we watched her undulate into the water to start her next trek. She was chased by this big male who was waiting in the water for her to make a run for it, but she got away from him. She'll spend three or four months at sea, and will return to Año Nuevo in May or June, when we'll recover her tags before she molts off her fur. And then, in December or January 09, she'll return to Año Nuevo to have another pup, if her mating was successful.