Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA--The E-Seal team started the hike from the truck to the beach at dawn this morning: We were headed out to find Penelope and recover her tags. Penelope is a ten-year-old elephant seal tagged by TOPP. Penelope is the first featured elephant seal from TOPP, and is quite popular: she has nearly 400 friends on Facebook! She's now the poster seal for Elephant Seal Homecoming Days.

Today, Penelope is back in the spotlight, this time joined by her pup. Penelope's a special seal for a few reasons. She's a regular at Año Nuevo. Some seals are sighted every few years, while Penelope has been on the researchers’ radar for years. Last spring, during the time when the elephant seals molt, the E-Seal team spotted her and watched her day after day…waiting for her new fur coat to get long enough so that tags could be glued on.

Penelope at her deployment last spring, when her tags were first glued on. As you can see, she gained a lot of weight over the last few months!

Elephant seals aggregate in large groups when on land. Being able to locate an individual seal repeatedly over seasons is not an easy task. Flipper tags and numbers written on the seals in Lady Clairol hair dye aide in this, but it’s not perfect. It’s hard to say if we were just lucky in repeatedly coming across her, or if she was the one searching for us.

A previous blog posting I described the E-Seal team as practically stumbling onto her as she arrived from her trip at sea. It's rare to see seals literally coming out of the ocean on to land. What are the odds that Penelope would be doing just that the very minute we were running through the waves? Shortly after she had her pup on January 24th. It’s a boy!

Penelope and her pup interacting before the recovery. As you can see, they exhibit a strong maternal-pup bond.

Today we found her with her five-day-old son at Tarsands, a large harem at Año Nuevo State Reserve. We recovered three tags: a satellite tag, velocity and time-depth recorder tag, and a radio tag. Then we measured her length and girth, and used an ultrasound to measure the thickness of of her blubber to determine how successful Penelope was at eating these past months at sea. Because she weighed in at 1,170 pounds during the procedure, the researchers estimate that Penelope returned to Año weighing more than 1,360 pounds. If you compare that to the 760 pounds she weighed when her tags were put on last spring, it’s safe to say that she’s had a successful feeding trip!

We remove Penelope's tags. The tags were attached in the spring with \epoxy glue and zip ties. To remove the tag, we use snips to cut the ties. There is so much to do that the E-Seal team is kept busy during recoveries. In this photo, PhD student Jason Hassrickm, at Penelope's head, is removing her satellite tag while PhD student Luis Huckstadt monitors anesthesia. I'm holding Penelope's nose to make sure that no one gets nipped if she wakes up a little. Penelope's pup was very curious throughout the recovery (above). He eventually came to have a closer look (below).

After all her seal stardom, Penelope’s friends are wondering about the obvious question….what now? Penelope will continue to be monitored throughout this breeding season and following seasons whenever she is sighted by researchers. Her pup will be weighed when he is weaned: he, too, now has a green flipper tag that we will use to identify him in the future. After the breeding season, TOPP researchers will analyze the data from her tags, and Penelope's information, like that of other tagged TOPP E-seals, will be incorporated into larger elephant seal studies looking at changes across seasons, years, environmental conditions, age, habitat utilization…you name it!

Penelope's tracks are illustrated above by blue line leaving the beach, and slowly turning to red as she returned. These tracks and other data recieved will be used by TOPP to address many questions about elephant seals, the North Pacific ecosystems, and even broad oceanographic questions about the habitats that she utilized.

For more information about Penelope, and to see more images of her deployment and recovery please visit her Facebook page.