Nicole Teutschel at Long Marine Lab, CA -- One of the best things about being a marine biologist is getting to ask questions about the oceans, and then figuring out how to get the answers. Many of the tags we deploy give us little clues, or puzzle pieces that we then get to put together in an attempt to discover the bigger picture. Professor Ken Yoda of the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Nagoya University in Japan was scratching his head trying to figure out a way to learn more about one of the missing pieces in the elephant seal puzzle: foraging.

Nicole Teutschel at Año Nuevo State Reserve, CA -- Last weekend we hiked down to the North Point harems on a mission to weigh Coya's and Flora’s weaners when we ran into Melinda and Cory, two E-Seal Team members doing resights -- looking for seals with flipper tags. They were on their way out, but had some great E-Seal gossip: Melinda had spotted a huge super-weaner in the dunes!

Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA -- Their proper name is weanlings. But we call them weaners. They've finished nursing. Most have gained 150 to 300 pounds. Almost all of their moms have headed back into the ocean. And now, among the dunes, willows and nooks and crannies of the beaches, a couple of thousand weaners clump together, in twos to twenties, going through their month-long fast.

Nicole Teutschel at Año Nuevo State Reserve, CA -- From the first day of life, elephant seals are living in the fast lane. Penelope's pup, who was born on January 24^th, was weaned around the 23^rd of February. Most pups are weaned about 27 days they're born.

Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA -- The E-Seal Team has a new member, Melinda Fowler. Although new to the TOPP team, she's had extensive experience with marine mammals. Melinda did her masters at Sonoma State University with Dan Crocker, who introduced the Missouri farm girl to the world of elephant seals. He showed her how their extreme behaviors and synchronized haul out schedule makes elephant seals a model system to study many physiological processes.

Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA -- After we recovered 16 tags, and deployed 19 tags on a new group of seals, the E-Seal team gets a break today…well sort of. The E-Seal team will be working on prepping the last three tags that will be deployed this weekend. These last three seals will be equipped with GPS tags. GPS tags produce high quality tracks using the GPS satellite system, and provide researchers excellent quality data that can be used to study habitat choice, navigation, behavior and you name it!

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!

Nicole Teutschel at Año Nuevo State Reserve, CA-- On Sunday, I was searching the beaches looking for ideal tagging candidates: adult females with flipper tags (that we put on when they were born), who are skinny, have big pups, and thick fur that we can glue the tags to. As the sun was setting, I was wading through the dozens of weaned pups in the Willows, some low-growing trees behind the largest harem at Año Nuevo State Reserve.

Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA -- We finally recovered Cheddar's tags...in Piedras Blancas. She's one odd seal. She spent a couple of weeks swimming within a few miles off Año Nuevo State Reserve and taunted us as we searched the beaches looking for her. Typically seals who are within 40 kilometers (24 miles) of Año Nuevo hit land the next morning. But day after day, Cheddar stayed just off shore. She never hit land!

Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA -- Sometimes recovering a satellite tag is a dangerous endeavor and can take hours. That's the way it was with Annie, the ninth named seal whose tag we needed to retrieve.