from Tim Page
Davis Station
Antarctica
Sunday 22 November 1998
To the Students and Teachers of Payne Road State School!
Hello there everyone! My name is Tim Page, and, you guessed it, I am in Antarctica at the moment. I suppose your first question is, who is Tim Page? Well I'm 32 years old (it was my birthday 2 days ago) and I live in Rosalie in Brisbane. You probably also want to know how I came to be writing to you. My girlfriend, Kaye, went to university with your teacher, Mrs Hartog. So when Mrs Hartog heard I was going to be in Antarctica, she thought it would be fun to keep in touch by email.
OK, so what on earth am I doing in Antarctica? And how on earth did I get here? I am here to do a seal survey of all the seals that live in the Pack Ice, which is the frozen sea that surrounds this continent. I got here in a really big ship, called the Aurora Australis. It is an icebreaker, which means that when we get to where the sea is frozen, we can smash through the ice and keep on going! It's great fun! Many seals spend part of the day on the ice floes, and we count the seals and penguins when we go past them in the ship. Sometimes we go up in a helicopter to count the seals from the air. This is also lots of fun, especially since it is the first time I've ever been in a helicopter.
Right now we are stopped at one of Australia's three bases on the Antarctic Continent, called Davis Station. It's a great place! The other day I went to a Penguin rookery, where there are thousands of little Adelie penguins sitting on eggs, waiting for them to hatch. Soon we will be leaving here and sailing back out to the pack ice, so we can count more seals.
Here are some questions that you sent me:
1) From Ben, "How many seals have you counted?"
We are still in the middle of counting, Ben, but here is what we've seen so far:
- Crabeater Seals: 383
- Ross Seals: 12
- Weddell Seals: 3
- Leopard Seals: 2
- Elephant Seals: 1
- Antarctic Fur Seals: 1
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TOTAL SEALS SEEN: 402
2) From Sarah, "How many different sorts of seals have you seen?"
So far we have seen six different sorts of seals. The one we see
most of all is the Crabeater seal, which doesn't really eat crabs, but
eats krill, which are like little prawns. The Crabeaters (we call
them "Crabbies") vary in colour, sometimes they are a chocolate brown and
sometimes almost white. Another seal we see sometimes is the Ross
Seal, which has a fat neck and funny small head. Today we also saw
some Weddell seals, which usually live on the ice that is attached to the
land, so we don't see them very often. They look a bit like big,
fat cats. We have also seen Leopard seals, which are really big and
have spots. They also have sharp teeth and eat penguins and other
young seals. Once we saw one Elephant seal, who are big and fat. They are
called "Elephant" because the adult males have big noses like elephants.
One person also saw an Antarctic Fur Seal, which, as you can probably guess,
is covered in lovely fur!
3) From Fianna, "Why do you count seals?"
Good question, Fianna. The reason we are counting seals is to
get an idea of the whole environment of the antarctic. You see there
are now a lot more Crabbies than there used to be. We want to know
why. We think it may have something to do with whales. In the
past whales were hunted a lot, so there were only a few left. Whales
also eat krill, and since there were only a few whales, the Crabbies got
more to eat and so there are now a lot more Crabbies! For us to understand
the ecology of this environment, we have to know how many of each animal
there is, and how they relate to each other.
4) From Kierra, "Do you know Mrs McCollow?"
I'm afraid I don't know Mrs McCollow, Kierra, but I do know Mrs Hartog.
By a strange coincidence, I had a teacher called Mrs McCollow when I was
in kindergarten in America!
I hope you enjoyed this everyone. If you have any more questions, you can just email me!
Have fun!
Tim Page