February 6, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
It’s gray seal pupping season in New England! NOAA researchers are working with colleagues to gather data from pups on Muskeget and Monomoy islands off the southeastern Massachusetts coast.
Pupping season generally runs from mid-December to early February, peaking in mid-January. Our researchers have conducted studies of animal abundance, distribution, and health on the islands in January for the past eight years. One research team is working on Muskeget Island off Nantucket, the largest gray seal breeding and pupping colony in the United States. Another team is on Monomoy, an island near Chatham on Cape Cod that is part of the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge.
Kimberly Murray, who coordinates the seal research program at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Woods Hole Laboratory and leads the team on Muskeget Island, outlined the teams’ goals. “We plan to place 20 satellite tags and nine acoustic tags on the weaned gray seal pups, and to collect as many health samples from pups as we can. Our goal is to sample 50 pups on Muskeget and 100 on Monomoy, but that depends on factors such as weather conditions, scheduling, and departure of weaned pups.”
The team also sampled 14 weaned gray seal pups on Seal Island in Maine. They placed five satellite tags and two acoustic tags on seal pups there to learn where those pups go. On January 30 researchers sampled and tagged 15 gray seal pups on the Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge, which includes Great Point Light, on Nantucket and collected scat or seal poop for microbiome/microplastics/food habits work.