Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA--Guadalupe’s tags have been recovered...again! Guadalupe is a busy seal -- this is the second time she’s carried satellite tags for TOPP. We put satellite tags on Guadalupe June 15, 2006 and removed them on February 2, 2007. Then she had a four-month break while she did her short migration out to sea and returned to molt. Then, we put tags on her on June 4, 2007. So, she wore tags for 18 months total. On February 1, we removed Guadalupe's satellite tags for the last time. You can look at this map to see the beach she's living on at Año Nuevo. 

Guadalupe protecting her pup at dawn, on the day of her tag recovery.

She’s what is called a “turnaround animal”. As soon as we had taken her tags off last spring, we turned around and put on new ones after the spring molt! Sometimes this technique is used to assess what seals do over an entire year, or to compare one year of foraging to another. Do seals always dive to the same depths? Are elephant seals returning to the same places in the oceans during each trip? Does seal dive behavior change from year to year?

Guadalupe's tracks from June 2006 to February 2007. She left the beach after having her pup, and retuned only a few months later to molt off her fur and we tagged her again.

Guadalupe was especially interesting to researchers because, during her first track, she spent time hanging around sea mounts -- underwater mountains where her food can aggregate. Sea mounts can be huge -- thousands of feet high, like the mountains we're familiar with -- and are found scattered throughout the world's oceans. By learning the habitats that elephant seals and other marine predators use, we can monitor those areas and find out if they're important for marine conservation.

Guadalupe's tracks from the tags recovered only a few days ago. This trip was about nine months long. However, at first look, it appears she traveled to many of the same places as the previous nine-month trip. This isn't where all seals travel; in fact, most tagged females swim farther off shore, straight out into the North Pacific Ocean. It will take a lof of analysis to figure out how similar these tracks are, and if she went to the same sea mounts.

The E-Seal team at work. This is a view from Guadalupe's tail. The team is busy taking ultrasound measurements, measuring girths, monitoring anesthesia, keeping track of the pup, and taking notes. In photo from right, Cory Champagne, Jason Hassrick, Guadalupe, Stella Villegas, and Guadalupe's pup.

The TOPP team plans to use Guadalupe’s data to help determine if individual elephant seals choose particular habitats to forage for food. Do some seals like foraging on sea mounts, while others prefer eddies, or the deep sea? Do seals stick with the same habitats over years, or do they change as they get older? By looking at Guadalupe’s tracks and depth measurements, we'll determine if she returned to the sea mount again this year. This will provide another clue as the TOPP team works to put together the missing pieces of elephant seal life at sea.