Patty slapped some of the shamrock-shaped gelatin pieces on to the glass wall for the sea lions to find.

Visitors and fur seals alike were curious about the activity.

But the fur seals were decidedly "meh" about the jello.

The sea lions, however, got right in there to explore!

There was lots of sniffing and chewing and tossing and biting of the gelatin.

And visitors had front row seats on the fun!

Did you see the harbor seals in The Boston Globe this weekend? They were showing off their artistic abilities during a Paint with the Seals program. We do this enriching behavior with the seals regularly, something fun that the seals can learn. But now visitors can be part of the creative process by choosing colors and being there while the masterpiece is created!

Learn more about our Paint With the Seals Program.

Read the full article in The Boston Globe.

Chacoda gets creative | Photo: David Ryan/Boston Globe

Cayenne gets creative | Photo: David Ryan/Boston Globe

The Aquarium may have been closed to visitors during recent storms, but the marine mammal trainers still reported to work. There were hungry mouths to feed and fun to be had! Check out Chiidax's reaction to all the white stuff.




Patty and Kim stayed nearby so they could report for breakfast and, of course, a little fun with the seals and sea lions.

Patty and Kim

Who needs to shovel when you can swim? As a local species, harbor seals know how to handle a blizzard.

And since there may be such a thing as too much fun in the snow, the seals and sea lions got to spend some time behind the scenes, too.

Zoe strikes a pose behind the scenes.

Leu flashes his good side for the camera.

And of course, there was shoveling to be done.

Male Northern fur seals grow at an incredible rate, and our male Leu is no exception. He came to us in June of 2012 at approximately nine months of age and he weighed only 29 lbs. His tiny size was due to the fact that he was found stranded as a very young pup along the coast of California. If you have been following our Marine Mammal Trainers Blog, you may remember the videos we showed you of Leu as a baby. He was missing some patches of guard hair but even then he was such a good looking little guy. The video below shows his first introduction to our behind the scenes area. Look at how cute he is!


Video from June 2012

Since that video was taken, Leu has been growing in leaps and bounds. As a growing animal he takes lots of naps and his favorite places to sleep are in the turtle pool and on our tactile toy in our holding room. Here are some pictures taken over the past two years.

November 2014

November 2014

We started the weekend with this behind-the-scenes look at the newest addition to the Aquarium--Kitovi the Northern fur seal pup. She is only 2-weeks-old and she will not be on exhibit until later this fall, so this sneak peek is your first opportunity to see her up close and interact with the Aquarium's trainers.


Marine Mammal Trainer Patty Schilling was on hand with the newborn pup to give you an update on her progress and describe the behaviors you see. Patty joined a recent expedition to the fur seal colony on St. Paul Island near Alaska. Check out all of her expedition posts and watch her Aquarium lecture on the subject.

 More video

Visit the rest of the family!
This little one might not be on exhibit yet, but after you see her in the Hangout, you can come congratulate her father, Isaac. He's the largest seal in the New Balance Foundation Marine Mammal Center. Grab your tickets online and print them out before you come!

More Aquarium hangouts
Google+ Hangouts on Air are a great way to connect with the Aquarium no matter where you are around the world. Not only can you watch live and ask questions as we share information about the blue planet, but after each event the video is saved to our YouTube channel and embedded on our blogs so you can access it any time.

Connect with the Aquarium on Google+ to be the first to know about these events and be sure to check out these previous Hangouts on Air:

Member Hangout with the Penguins
Aquarium members were invited to have a behind-the-scenes peek at the Aquarium's penguin colony during the recent renovation project. Now, the recorded video is up for everyone to enjoy.

 
Predicting Climate Change Lecture
The New England Aquarium was pleased to welcome the MIT Lorenz Center's John Carlson Lecture to the Simons The speaker is Professor Timothy Palmer of the Royal Society of Research.



 

Lunch Break with the Sea Turtles
Visit with some rescued and recovering sea turtles at the Aquarium's Animal Care Center and learn about sea turtle rescue from the Aquarium's Marine Animal Rescue Team.




Climate Change Education Activity
Join students from around the country as they learn about carbon sources and sinks. The interactive activity is designed to explain the carbon cycle and the imbalance in the carbon cycle.





Cooking Demo with Chef Barbara Lynch
Make some delicious nudi with a world renowned chef and the Aquarium's culinary partner, Barbara Lynch. It's a quick family friendly recipe that'll be ready in minutes.

Two years ago, I had the opportunity to join in a research trip to St. Paul, Alaska with a group of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In case you missed my words of wisdom from that trip, here is the start of the eight blogs about that experience.

This year, I was thrilled when the researchers and my bosses gave me the green light to go again! (Clearly I am just a little bit excited.) This biennial research trip involves a study of Northern fur seals to determine the population of the largest breeding colony in the United States. What makes the trip even more dynamic is the fact that we have a brand new addition to our Marine Mammal Department… a baby Northern fur seal! Ursula gave birth to a beautiful baby boy on Tuesday, July 10, 2012. [Learn more about this special event here, and see video of little guy here.]

All images and video taken during this research study were authorized by the Marine Mammal Protection Act Permit # 14327.

~Patty

Tonight (Wednesday, April 6) at 7 p.m. Senior Marine Mammal Trainer Patty Schilling gave a free lecture:

Counting Seal Pups in the Pribilofs 
Thanks to everyone who attended and watched the live webcast!

Background
The New England Aquarium is home to six northern fur seals, half of the U.S. aquarium population. Aquarium visitors have the chance to see an animal rarely seen anywhere else. A majority of northern fur seals migrate to the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea for their annual breeding season. The National Marine Mammal Laboratory does a study every two years to determine the rate of pup production on the Pribilof Islands. This August, through the John G. Cunningham Award, Patty Schilling helped with the 2010 fur seal pup count. It was a chance to observe these rarely seen animals first hand in the wild and utilize the information to better understand the Aquarium’s Northern fur seals.

You can scroll through all the blog posts written about this expedition here.
Browse video posted by the Aquarium's marine mammal trainers here.

About Aquarium Lectures
The Aquarium has been providing free lectures and films by scientists, environmental writers, photographers and others since 1972. The Aquarium Lecture Series is presented free to the public through the generosity of the Lowell Institute, which has been providing funding for free public lectures at universities and museums since 1836.

Click through to see a schedule of upcoming lectures.

My last post about my trip to St. Paul to aid in northern fur seal research was back in October. However, there is still so much more that I want to show everyone! If you would like to learn more about my trip, stay tuned for the remainder of the St. Paul Logs. But, if you can't wait that long, you are in luck! Next Wednesday at 7 p.m. I will be giving a presentation about my experiences in Alaska as part of the Aquarium Lecture Series. The lecture is free and you are welcome to sign up in advance.

New England Aquarium Senior Marine Mammal Trainer Patty is participating in the 2010 Northern Fur Seal Pup Count in St. Paul, Alaska. You can scroll through all of her posts from the field here.

A northern fur seal pup snoozing on the rookery.

Remember the challenge at the end of St. Paul: Log #7? Well, how many tags did you find? If you look closely, (and I realize it is a tiny picture on a computer screen) there are three. Here is the picture again with all of the tags circled. Now you can understand why we used binoculars and a scope! The animals are moving quite frequently and a tag can be visible one moment and gone the next so you really need to pay attention.

















The researchers return to the rookeries at the end of breeding season, when the mothers and pups are getting ready to leave the island and migrate. They will remove the tags from the females and use all of the information gathered to help determine the relationship between a marine mammal who spends months on an island but must also travel miles at sea to find food all while raising a pup. Not an easy lifestyle I am sure.

There is still plenty more experiences that I can't wait to share with you so stay tuned!

~Patty

Well, I have seen the last of my shearing days. Today the shearing team I am on is going to finish up at the last of our shearing sights and instead, I am going to learn how to do re-sights. Although the work has been exhausting, I am a little disappointed to miss out on the last day of our team's efforts. I think by day five I was actually able to hold my own and almost keep pace with the more experienced crew members (almost).

The one thing that I never mastered was picking up the pups in a way that prevented them from latching onto my gauntlets. Remember the picture of me in my lovely shearing outfit? Well the leather wrap that went from my wrist to my shoulder is called a gauntlet and it is meant to protect my arm should the pups bite. And they do. A LOT! This is what my arms looked like at the end of five days of shearing...painful! Crew members with more experience usually come away bruise free but that was definitely not the case for me. I'll have to work on that.



And now I head off with Lou and Greg to learn about re-sighting. This is a very important study that has been going on for many years where female pups and adults have tags put on their flippers so that we can track their site fidelity (or likelihood to come back to their place of birth), mothering skills / successful birth rate and age survival.



It's amazing how much information you can get by knowing simply who the individual is based on when and where the tag was first attached. All of this research is done on St. Paul at a location called Polovina Cliffs. The cliffs allow us to observe the animals with minimal disturbance since we are so high above them. There are also blinds built on the cliffs to offer us protection in tough weather. It also gives us a great view of the activity below.

This project has been going on all summer, rain or shine. I had the opportunity to participate for three days and the weather can be daunting but you get caught up in the task at hand and start to forget that your fingers are no longer as mobile as they should be. For 6 to 8 hours the goal is to sight as many flipper tags as you can, note whether or not the female has a pup with her and what the female is or is not doing with that pup. It's kind of like playing a really intense version of Where's Waldo?.

Here, you give it a try. The picture below is a bull male with his harem. In it there is at least one female with a flipper tag. See if you can find any more. For re-sights we have binoculars and a scope but sometimes just using your eyes is the best way to catch a tag. Try it out and see how you do. I'll show you what I found in the next blog. Happy searching!


~Patty

Do you remember when you were little and your parents would tell you to never run with a sharp object in your hand? Well, that rule definitely does not apply during pup shearing on St. Paul! Out here you have a pair of sharp sheep shears strapped to your hip and when a group of pups are gathered together and the signal (it usually looks like that hand gesture from Neo in the Matrix... got the visual?) is given you move as fast as you can over wet, slippery rocks to get to them. The picture below gives you an idea of the topography that we deal with out on the rookeries.

The goal each day is to shear the selected number of pups as quickly and accurately as possible so that we can remove ourselves from the rookery and allow the bull males and their harems to come back up to their territory. So in this situation, running with scissors is recommended (safely, of course). Let me tell you, never before have I felt so uncoordinated! As I try to keep up with everyone else heading to the group of pups there is a constant thought on repeat in my head... stand up, don't fall, stand up, don't fall. I was so grateful to have knee pads on! :)



~Patty

Once suited up for pup shearing (see Andrew in his awesome attire below) we go out on the rookery and Rolf (our other fearless leader) shows us how to properly hold the pup during the shearing process.
~Patty

At the start of the day, we are all given a briefing about our jobs and individual responsibilities as we begin the 2010 Northern fur seal pup survey. The most important thing that we all need to remember is to be "switched on" (a term used often throughout our trip by Rod, one of our leaders) at all times while on the rookeries.

Unlike the New England Aquarium fur seals, the fur seals on St. Paul are NOT trained and that needs to be kept foremost in our minds (especially by a certain marine mammal trainer) as we move onto their breeding ground. This is not a situation where you can walk up to Baranov and give him a morning scratch or open up the hallway door and have Ursula keep you company in the food room. These are males holding onto breeding territory for months and females who are very possessive of the pups that they have just given birth to within the past month. With that being said... I am so excited!


We load into the trucks and make our way to the first of the rookeries where we will begin the shearing. Today's destination is Morjovi. It is one of the two rookeries on the northeast point of the island. The map below denotes all of the rookeries on St. Paul and I will be referring to it often as we begin our survey around the island. We have to go to every rookery to count the pups.... no small task.


Rookery sites on St. Paul Island. Photo courtesy of NOAA.


As the trucks make there way up the road I can feel my excitement rising. To see a Northern fur seal in the wild is something I never imagined having the chance to witness. Our caravan of trucks (fifteen people in total) makes its way through all sorts of different topography until we head through a bunch of sand dunes...



Sand dunes on St. Paul



and then as the road levels out... there they are. Northern fur seals everywhere! I couldn't get my camera out fast enough!


Sub-adult males

Knowing very little about wild fur seal behavior, I was told that the area in the picture is where the sub-adult males (or SAMs) as well as the older males who were not able to hold territory spend the breeding season. This is not considered part of the rookery since no pups are born in this section so it is usually referred to as haul out. There were so many animals there... I could not believe that I was seeing this many fur seals all in once place. Having a small group of fur seals at NEAq seemed like a lot but nothing compares to this!



Male Northern fur seal with harem and pups

My paparazzi moment over, it is time to gear up for the first day of shearing. Check out the picture below to see my fancy garb. Pretty nice huh? :) The weather here can be very unpredictable so we wear multiple layers as well as thick rain gear for an outer layer. Along with that we have a very stylish waist belt that holds a holster and shears that we will use to mark 10% of the pups born this year. We wear gauntlets on our arms to protect us when picking up the pups for shearing. They may only have baby teeth but they are still sharp! And then we wear thick gloves with liners underneath.



Fashionable shearing attire


Here we go!


~Patty

The plane was still pretty heavy though so we made two stops along the way to refuel: one at King Salmon and the other at Cold Bay. Check out this Google map to see where we traveled along the way.



View Trip to St. Paul in a larger map




On the right in the Staff Quarters pic there is a white building which contains the lab, offices and all of our gear. I will become very familiar with this building in the coming days. The main building (the one to the left in the picture above) is the living quarters. We pull up to the door and head inside. There are small apartments and individual bedrooms with enough room to hold over twenty people. Here is a picture of my room complete with a map of St. Paul (hopefully this will prevent me from getting lost :)

Once unpacked, we received a brief intro and then had a potluck dinner complete with chocolate cake with chocolate icing for dessert. Yum! Now it's time to hit the sack. Tomorrow we have to be up and ready to go at 9 a.m. for our first day of work with the seals! (Which is the stuff you really want to see anyway, right?) Stay tuned!

~Patty