Preliminary report of pack-ice seals presence in the Admiralty sound area, Antarctic Peninsula, during spring: Evidence of breeding events.

NEGRETE JAVIER; SOIBELZON ESTEBAN; CARLINI PEDRO ; SOIBELZON LEOPOLDO H.; MARQUEZ MARIA ELBA ISABEL

San Francisco

Conferencia; 21ST BIENNIAL CONFERENCE ON THE BIOLOGY OF MARINE MAMMALS; 2015

The Society for Marine Mammalogy

Data regarding distribution and abundance of Antarctic pack-ice seals is scarce mainly due to the logistical difficulties to access the habitat of those species. Here we present raw data about Weddell and crabeater seals numbers obtained during two aerial surveys conducted in the northeast area of the Antarctic Peninsula. A transect of 416 kilometres was revised on September 24th and one of 920 km during October 1 of 2014 using a DHC-6 Twin Otter aeroplane belonging to the Argentinean Air Force. During surveys a researcher took pictures of all the groups of seals observed. Those pictures were analyzed in order to identify the species present and to obtain an accurate number of individuals for each species. A total of 16 groups of seals were photographed and in 11 of these groups the species were identified. Weddell seals were present in all of the 11 groups while crabeater seals were present only in 4 of them. Combining both flights we count 54 Weddell and 118 crabeater seals, while a total of 45 seals were unidentified. Crabeater were always in company of Weddell seals which reinforce the idea that the formers use the holes made by the Weddell seals to access to the ice surface. Moreover 13 out of the 16 groups registered were distributed around tide cracks where round holes in the ice could be observed. Its is worth to mention that during the second survey a Weddell seal pup was observed and also during the first week of October in the vicinity of Marambio station 12 more were counted. Given the species is philopatric this data may be useful to consider the Admiralty sound as a breeding area. Although this is primary data we believe is valuable since little is known about abundance and distribution of seals in this area.