Apologies for the long gap in our posts, it's been a hectic few weeks here on the island. We've had visitors!! A National Geographic expedition to research and film on all four islands in the Tristan group came to Gough last week, so we've been busy showing them as much of the incredible wildlife here as possible before they had to leave to head back north to Tristan da Cunha. It was so nice to see new faces, and to be able to show our lovely island and all of its inhabitants off!
It’s not just birds that come to Gough to breed; we also
share the island with Subantarctic Fur Seals. Our beaches are currently
swarming with dense colonies of seals, whose pups are around 35 days old at
the moment. The larger males have been around since October and have been
fighting to maintain their territories and gather their harems. They will head
back to sea around the end of January, by which time the females will have
given birth to their pups and will be pregnant again. These colonies are noisy, smelly places, with
about 300,000 seals spread across the island. In fact, Gough holds around 80%
of the population of the species.
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| Our beaches are full of adult Fur Seals at the moment (Em Witcutt) |
Recently we headed down to the beaches to weigh 100 of the
very sweet pups. They weigh about 6kg when they are first born, and put on
weight very quickly so are currently around 9kg. We’ll return at set intervals
throughout the year to reweigh the growing pups and check on their progress. They
will remain on the beaches for around 10 months, after which they will head out
to sea and not return for at least 4 years.
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| Nahhhhhh, little cuties (Em Witcutt) |
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| A curious pup coming to investigate at lunch time (Em Witcutt) |
More soon...
Em
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