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WINTER 2017
WEDDELL SEAL AND PUP
The southernmost breeding mammals in the world, Weddell seals
live in McMurdo Sound all year long. But to pull this off they must
at times dive half a mile deep, enduring the pressure of a car
crusher, and stay submerged for an hour and a half. They must
also eat their way through the ice to keep their dive holes open
through the winter.
BBC FILMING UNDER THE ICE
Beneath the seal colony the ocean floor was a mosaic. Nemertean worms, more
than 6 feet long, snaked through a carpet of lurid sea stars. Urchins tiptoed on their
many spines. Every creature was either eating or hunting, but it was all happening
in slow motion. I joined a team of BBC filmmakers who had deployed time-lapse
cameras to reveal the concerted industry of the seafloor. Seen at high speed, sea
stars stormed up the slope en masse as an advancing army of singular purpose.
The target of the attack was an unlucky Weddell seal pup, which had died under the
ice and sunk to the bottom on the shallow underwater shelf.