Today I hiked to North Drakes Beach with Sarah and three other park employees to tag elephant seals. While tagging it was important to walk lightly on the sand and stay downwind from the animals so that they would not wake up. I was surprised to see how many animals had left the beach. Over the course of the breeding season there had been over 200 females on this beach, today there were only four. The majority of animals on the beach were weined pups. These were the animals we focused on tagging, in order to identify their birth place. I played the roll of data recorder and tag dispensor. Between the tagging of the animals I would tally, record tag numbers, and tag placing on the flipper. All together we tagged 33 pups that will be able to be indentified by these plastic tags for the rest of their lives. We were not able to tag all the pups on the beach because they began to awake after a while. I am excited to do more tagging in the future and I better recognize the benefits due to the fact that I have done many surveys in the past.
