Nicole Teutschel at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab, CA-- The beaches are looking more empty everyday because the females are coming into estrous, weaning their pups, and returning to sea. So far 18 of 23 new satellite tags have been deployed, allowing us to not only watch the beaches clear out, but the ocean come alive as we recive satellite hits from the new set of tagged seals as they swim into the North Pacific.

Luis Huckstadt at Punta Arenas, Chile--We are finally back to civilization after a successful field season at Cape Shirreff, Antarctica. I'm happy to report that we accomplished our goal of deploying 15 satellite tags on southern elephant seals (see Cool Cousins). This work could not have been done without the great crew that helped us at the Cape Shirreff camp.

Scott Shaffer, at UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab. Only two out of the nine satellite-tagged fledgling albatrosses that took to the air for the first time in July are still sending back signals. A Laysan and a black-footed albatross are still transmitting their positions as they soar across the wide Pacific Ocean. But, along with another black-footed albatross who stopped reporting about 10 days ago, these birds sent back locations for 117-119 days. That's our new record!!

Scott Shaffer monitoring Black-footed Albatross. Well, a total of 9 albatross fledglings have been equipped with satellite transmitters and they have all