Melinda Fowler at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab--We put out our first elephant seal tag of this breeding season.  Her identity was WT073.  The "W" stands for the color of her flipper tag--white.  The color of the seals' flipper tags tells us what rookery they were born at.  Here at Año Nuevo we put green flipper tags out.  The white of WT073's tag tells us that she was born and tagged at San Simeon.  She had her first pup at Año Nuevo in 2006.  She's clearly become a regular up north, since this year is her 4th pup at Año Nuevo.  In fact, we put a satellite tag on her last breeding season.

A green flipper tag that will be placed in the webbing in a seals' hind flipper as a unique

identifyer.

 Part of our tagging effort this year will include deploying satellite tags on animals who have already carried a satellite tag on a post-breeding trip.  This way we can compare foraging behavior between El Niño years and 'normal' years, to see how changes in weather patterns might change individuals foraging decisions.  We are planning to put out a total of 20 tags on seals that have been previously tagged.  Additionally, some of these females will have a new type of tag, one that is part of a collaboration with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).  NMFS has a research program in place that places very small acoustic tags in salmon.  Our seals will be carrying small tags that will record encounters with these salmon.  These tags will "listen" for salmon that have been acoustically tagged.  When we recover the 'listening' tag from the seal we can look at her satellite track and see where she may have encountered salmon that were also carrying tags.  Watch this space for more detailed information about the salmon/seal story!

  University of California Santa Cruz researchers prepare to deploy a satellite tag. 

Photo by E. Pickett