We rolled the dice a little bit today and it paid off. Given our difficulty finding animals and ice and the fact that the previously tagged crabeater seals had adopted a pattern of hauling out at night, we decided to move into an entirely new area closer to Palmer Station in the hope that we could have an additional half day to tag on Saturday.

Late in the day we were rewarded with ice and several seals. We successfully deployed a CTD tag on a crabeater seal just before sunset (photo above). The pancake ice was very thick and it was very slow going getting to the seal. The animal cooperated nicely and we were able to deploy successfully despite the small size of the ice floe.

We made another approach for a second seal but decided not to attempt after the animal moved to the edge of the floe. (That's the Gould at sunset, above.) We'll have one more try tomorrow morning before we return to Palmer Station.