Cape Shirreff Situation Reports 2024-2025
These reports highlight science activities and events from the U.S. Antarctic Marine Living Resources Program's Holt Watters Field Camp at Cape Shirreff, Livingston Island, part of the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica
U.S. AMLR Program 2024–25 Cape Shirreff Field Team:
- Samuel Woodman, Biologist
- Jaelyn Leslie, Biological Science Technician
- Kristen Alvstad, Biological Science Technician
- Sonja Feinberg, Biological Science Technician
- Dr. Douglas Krause, Program Lead and Head of Pinniped Studies
- Dr. Jefferson Hinke, Head of Seabird Studies
- Lieutenant Eric Fritzsche, NOAA Corps Officer
Situation Report 1: Arrival. November 11 – 24, 2024
Camp Opening
The 2024-25 Cape Shirreff season began on November 11, 2024, when the NOAA’s Antarctic Marine Living Resources (AMLR) Program’s Kristen Alvstad, Jaelyn Leslie, Sonja Feinberg, and Samuel Woodman departed San Diego for Punta Arenas, Chile. The primary project goals for this season, which are much simplified from the past two seasons, are as follows: complete annual monitoring for both the AMLR Seabird and Pinniped science programs, and finish several construction efforts that were unable to be completed last season due to loss of materials during offload. Upon arrival to Chile, the opening crew inspected, inventoried, and repacked essential gear and cargo.
On the morning of November 15, the opening crew boarded the M/V Betanzos and were reacquainted with old friends from the ship’s crew. They also were joined for the voyage by Tony Cossio, who would direct deck operations during the offload, as well as deploy the gliders and mooring, and two EYOS colleagues: Simon Ager and Andreas Bergstrom. Cargo operations to load the vessel began at approximately 9:30 a.m. local time, and were completed by 3:00 p.m. After a brief weather delay, the Betanzos pushed off and headed south at approximately 6:00 p.m. The now-expanded crew enjoyed a smooth and gorgeous ride around Tierra del Fuego and through the Beagle Channel, and relatively smooth sailing across the Drake Passage. Time on the ship and good weather provided the opportunity for servicing our ATV on the ship’s deck. Despite a recent servicing, the ATV did not start when it was loaded; the issue was traced back to gummed up spark plugs, which may need intermittent servicing throughout the field season. A huge thanks to Simon, Tony, Diego from the Betanzos, and the Betanzos’ chief engineer for their efforts to both teach Sam about the ATV and to get the ATV working again!
We arrived at Cape Shirreff around 4:00 p.m. on November 19 in stormy seas. However, the seas calmed, and offload operations commenced at 6:00 p.m., with the first boat arriving onshore just after 7:00 p.m. We split duties, with two team members opening camp, and the other two team members preparing the landing beach for cargo runs. There was even more snow at the Cape than last season; the landing beach had six-to-seven-foot snow berms, and thus we moved snow and cut stairs to allow for transporting gear above the tide line. The Betanzos used a combination of Zodiacs and their large, rigid hull ‘tender’ boats to transport our field gear and eight fish boxes to shore. Operations were halted around 10:00 p.m. due to darkness, but having received our minimum offload requirements, we stayed onshore.
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Upon inspection, the Holt Watters Field Camp was overall in good shape. This is a credit to the amazing architects that designed the camp, and the amazing construction folks that built it (and especially those that did both!). Even with large snow berms on the beach, there was minimal shoveling to do at camp to open doors (one to four feet, depending on the door), and the new deck made it very easy to both shovel and remove ice. Also, thank you to last year’s closing crew for making it an easy initial inspection! All propane lines were clear, and the only mold that was found was on the top of the tea kettle and from two burst cans in the supply room. These spots were quickly eviscerated. Upon camp opening, we discovered that the new solar power system did not charge properly over the winter. We are working with Bespoke (the main construction contractor) to fix the problem.
After the partial offload on November 19, weather over the next few days did not permit for additional offloads. Instead, the Betanzos steamed around the western side of Livingston Island into the Bransfield Strait to deploy two gliders. These gliders will ‘fly’ underwater transects to collect oceanographic information, and allow for ESD scientists to use the acoustic information collected by the gliders to estimate krill biomass in the region. After deploying the gliders, the Betanzos returned to Cape Shirreff on the morning of November 21. However, conditions still did not allow for boat operations, and thus the Betanzos and our crew were stuck in ‘offload purgatory’ as we waited to see if we would get a weather window to resume operations
Finally, a window opened on Friday, November 22, and operations resumed. We were able to complete one offload run on Friday morning, and at 4:00 p.m., weather conditions allowed the ship to run three boats at a time (one tender boat and two Zodiacs) and make short work of the rest of the gear from the ship. We worked tirelessly to quickly get materials out of boats and onto the intertidal rocks so the boats could return to the ship, and then to move the gear up the snow berm to be able to organize into fish boxes above the tideline. Gear ranged from light dried food goods to the ATV and a 300-pound generator for the new electrical system. Operations were completed at approximately 10:00 p.m., and all gear was secured by 11:00 p.m. We returned to camp, tired but exhilarated, and ready to finish the bowls of ramen that had been pushed aside when ship operations had resumed. All agreed that Cape Shirreff very rarely gives you exactly what you want, but that it always gives you what you need.
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After getting crew and boats back on the vessel and secured, the Betanzos then set sail back north, to both deploy an underwater mooring just off Cape Shirreff and to return to Chile. We cannot thank Tony, Simon, and Andreas enough for their efforts and support with making the offload happen, and being so flexible and willing to jump in wherever needed. Additionally, a heartfelt thank you to the Betanzos as a whole and especially to the captain, and to the crew for their efforts and being so positive and willing to help offload.
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Science Activities
Pinnipeds
On November 23, we kicked off science activities by conducting a partial southern elephant seal census. We counted 21 weaners (weaned pups) and 1 non-territorial adult male sighted between Marko and Larga; there are additional weaners on other beaches, and we will conduct a full census next week. There did not appear to be any active breeding elephant seal harems remaining.
We conducted an initial colony survey of all U.S. AMLR study beaches on November 24. We also conducted a census of South Shetland Antarctic fur seals (SSAFS) on the study beaches. While in the coming days this census will focus on adult females, adult males, and pups, on the 24th we only counted six pups. There are a few harems with more than two females sighted on active study beaches, including two tagged adult females.
We have not yet conducted a comprehensive phocid census; however, we have seen several Weddell seals and two one-month-old Weddell seal pups.
Upcoming plans include unpacking and prepping the fur seal lab, capture training, and completing our first Cape-wide phocid census of the season.
Seabirds
Although efforts were mostly focused on offloading and tackling camp opening, we inspected the colonies for the first time on November 24. We were greeted by a surprise visitor: a king penguin! The king was tucked away in colony 5 amidst busy gentoo penguins bustling to finish their rock nests.
The colonies are positively buzzing with activity as breeding gentoo and chinstrap penguins complete their two egg clutches. As of November 24, most gentoo nests have 1-2 eggs and most chinstrap nests have 0-1 eggs. Colony 10 gentoos, similar to last year, have already completed their clutches and have begun incubation. The male and female on each nest will now take shifts incubating their eggs until their chicks hatch.
We measured exposed snow stakes at all four stake sites on November 24. Snow totals were as follows: Modulo flats (80 cm), west colonies (120 cm), east colonies (110 cm), and Hue (70 cm).
In the coming weeks, we will check reproduction cameras, mark known-age (KA) penguin nests to monitor through the season, complete the chinstrap adult weight and egg 1 weight study to assess the condition of incoming breeders, and start daily resights of banded penguins.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Monitoring
Due to the worldwide spread of High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI), we are closely monitoring all study beaches for any signs of sick or dead animals. We have not identified the presence of HPAI infected animals thus far, but we will continue to monitor all study beaches for the duration of the 2024-25 field season.
Weather
The weather station has been successfully mounted on the Holt Watters field camp communications tower. Weather data was not logged during the first week of opening camp but in general we have experienced sunny, windy, and snowy days since arriving at the Cape. The weather has been generally cold, with temperatures frequently below freezing. Stay tuned for more thorough and captivating weather updates in the near future.
Camp Life and Safety
The first week was full of opening camp activities that were made easier by the new Holt Watters facilities. As of Sunday, five full days after arrival, camp felt almost completely opened, which typically took a couple of weeks in the old facilities. Additionally, we are enjoying the view of at least 33 icebergs from our front galley windows.
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Camp is mold-free, and most window and door covers have been taken off. Some of us decided to channel our east coast/midwest childhoods, and thus the deck is ~70 percent clear of snow, including having clear walkways between all of the buildings. We began to mount items on the communications tower, although as of Sunday we were still troubleshooting the email system. We have good communication with the Iridium satellite phone and Garmin Inreaches.
A water inventory was conducted; we currently are at approximately 40 percent water capacity. We will install water collection gutters once the temperatures are consistently above freezing.
The snow has generally been firm enough to allow for limited ATV runs down to the landing beach. Thus, between the ATV and many sled runs, all food and critical gear has been transported to camp.
On November 24, we performed a safety orientation walk-through of camp and conducted a medical drill, which included testing communications with George Washington Maritime, our remote medical provider.
Significant time has been spent debugging the power system to confirm the source of the problem with the solar power system. In addition, we set up a temporary ‘power system’ using one of the generators on station to allow for charging and powering appliances as needed.
A welcome sight was the newly constructed bird blind/emergency shelter that withstood its first winter in Antarctica. The blind was missing two window covers and a door cover but the exterior was in overall great shape. No major leaks were found within the building, and the power system started without trouble. The stove was in good working order; however, the wall heater did not start (it most likely needs a new propane tank). Further efforts will be made in the coming weeks to get the new bird blind fully operational, but for now it is open for business!
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Situation Report 2: November 25 ‒ December 1, 2024
Weekly Overview
After completing the offload and taking a few subsequent deep breaths, we at Cape Shirreff have jumped full bore into both setting up all aspects of camp and science science science. Stay tuned below for a very fun Thanksgiving celebration, and a new Cape tradition.
Science Activities
Pinnipeds
This week was full of lab work and other preparations to get ready for perinatal captures. We are aiming to conduct six to eight perinatal captures, where we capture a South Shetland Antarctic fur seal (SSAFS) mother – pup pair to take samples and measurements, and to deploy instruments to track mom’s foraging trip length. We tested our gas anesthesia machine, performed range testing with our new VHF transmitters, and conducted perinatal capture training.
We conducted censuses of SSAFS on our study beach to track female arrival time and to calculate the date of median pupping. During our most recent census on December 1, we counted 85 females, 91 territorial males, and 55 pups. Interestingly, last season we didn’t start fur seal censuses until December 2, 2023, when we only counted 40 pups.
Since November 24, we have been conducting daily resights of previously tagged seals on our study beaches, and opportunistically on other beaches. To date, we have observed 17 tagged AFS (seven of known age), one tagged Weddell seal, and one southern elephant seal that was tagged by a different research program.
During our first Cape-wide phocid census on November 29, we counted 351 elephant seals, 28 Weddell seals, and one male leopard seal. After the season, these counts will be added to the published, open access CS-PHOC dataset for anyone to access and use.
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Also during the Cape-wide phocid census, we observed 99 live and 3 dead weaned elephant seal pups. Thus, at least 102 elephant seal pups were born at the Cape this year, which is the highest tally in at least a decade.
In terms of fun sightings, we saw one Weddell pup this week, and one leucistic (i.e., blond) male fur seal.
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Seabirds
This week, seabird research kicked into gear with a suite of objectives completed. First, we checked the overwinter cameras that monitor penguin reproductive study sites. These trail cameras take a picture every 30 minutes during daylight hours to capture when the majority of chinstrap and gentoo penguins start making their nests, lay their eggs, and later on, hatch their chicks. All 13 cameras had good batteries and were fully operational.
Second, we sought out and marked known-age (KA) penguin nests. Chinstrap and gentoo penguins that were flipper-banded as chicks are monitored throughout the breeding season. So far, we have identified 23 gentoo KA nests and 7 chinstrap KA nests. Hopefully we will discover more next week, but these are a great start. We will now monitor these nests every day until the chicks are big enough to be left alone in the nest in early February.
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Everyone at camp joined together to complete the adult, egg one study for chinstrap penguins on November 26. We weighed 45 chinstrap pairs as well as their first eggs in order to determine how fit the adults are on average coming into the breeding season.
Resights of flipper-banded penguins occurred throughout the week. Penguins may have been banded as adults or as chicks to determine long-term survival rates. Every day, we look for bands among the colonies and record every individual we see. Last year, we deployed ankle-mounted global location sensing (GLS) tags on breeding chinstrap penguins. Once recovered, these tags will provide data on where the penguins went throughout winter. But, first they need to be recovered. This week, one ankle band was recovered, but sadly, at some point over the winter, the tag fell off. We will continue efforts to find and recover these tags throughout the field season.
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On November 29, a primary skua check was done in 10 brown skua territories to assess breeding status. No eggs were found, but many territories had defensive skua pairs on nests. Next week, we will check all the skua territories on the Cape and monitor them throughout their breeding season.
Last but not least, on November 30, the gentoo nest census was completed. We counted 1268 nests! This is the highest number of gentoo nests ever recorded at the Cape. The past two highest counts were 1043 nests in 2000 and 1038 last year. Good job gentoos!
Unoccupied Aerial Systems
We completed the out-of-box set up and calibration checklist for the APH-28 unoccupied aerial system (UAS). We also completed a hand test, and are ready to fly next week when the winds calm down.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Monitoring
Due to the worldwide spread of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), we have been closely monitoring all study beaches and colony areas for signs of sick or dead seabirds or pinnipeds, and checking all other beaches/locations when in those areas. We observed no new dead animals or signs of HPAI this week.
Weather
This week was our first week of collecting weather data after mounting the weather station on the Holt Watters field camp’s communications tower. After some troubleshooting with the weather system, we were able to collect and download data from November 28 – December 1. Wind speed averaged 11 mph with a maximum of 29 mph. Wind gusts were 18 mph on average with the highest recorded gust at 41 mph. Wind direction was predominantly from the west (54 percent) followed by wind from the east (19 percent), south (16 percent), and north (11 percent). Average temperature was -0.4oC, with a maximum of 3.3oC and a minimum of -2.1oC. The lowest wind-chill recorded was -7.9oC.
Camp Maintenance
Water
Despite the sunshine, temperatures remained frigid and have kept the majority of the water barrels frozen. We have a water barrel in the freshies room to have liquid water, and also have continued to melt snow to supplement our water supply until temperatures rise enough to put up the rain gutters.
Power
Never has successfully turning on a light switch felt so good. As mentioned last week, at camp opening we had a problem with our solar power system.. Luckily, we had two new batteries in our shipment scheduled to be added to the power bank later this season, so Sam got to be an apprentice electrician (coached by Justin Dye of Bespoke Project Solutions, our contracted electrician who is set to come down in January) and swapped in the new batteries. Since then, we have enjoyed having consistent 110V electricity, which has meant not having to use 12V batteries and car chargers for everything, and getting to hear electrical noises like our HRV systems keeping the buildings dry. It’s a whole new world at Cape Shirreff!
Although it’s functional, the battery bank is not yet complete. The plan is to expand the battery bank to 4 storage units. Until we are able to do that, the limited storage capacity means we need to be careful about how and when we use appliances and power. For instance, freezers for our frozen food and biological samples are low power draw and thus running at all times, while duct and electric space heaters are a high draw and can only be run during the day when there is enough photovoltaic power. Over the past few days, we have gotten into the rhythm of how to use power and monitor the system, as well as getting to learn about the difference between a volt and a watt. Overall, we are both enjoying it and able to meet all of our basic needs with the current power system, and looking forward to upgrades coming in January.
Other
Last week, we ran into an issue with our email communication antenna. This week, we successfully mounted our backup antenna on our communications tower, and have been enjoying being able to email with both work colleagues and loved ones. We also ran a cable for and mounted an additional Iridium antenna, allowing us to make satellite phone calls from inside and not outside in the cold and wind.
We have made several runs to the beach with the ATV for our remaining supplies. However, snow, ice, and specifically melting snow have made the route treacherous for the ATV, which means that most items will wait in place on the boat beach until the snow has melted.
After making the power system operational, we brought up two freezers that were used last year by the pop-up construction camp. One freezer was placed in the supply room for overflow food storage, while the other was placed in the lab as the new sample freezer.
All door and window covers have been removed, and all covers and associated hardware have been organized, labeled, and stored for the season.
Several door handles have broken through normal use; replacement door handles have been brought up from the landing beach and prepped to be installed when time permits.
We have found several of the window/door covers that blew off overwinter. These have been secured, and will be transported back to camp as time permits.
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Camp Life and Safety
Happy Thanksgiving from Cape Shirreff! We decided that Thursday there was too much to do, and too much good weather to do it in, and thus we pushed our celebration to Saturday. Saturday had all of the Thanksgiving feels. We celebrated in style, with an oven-roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, mac & cheese, green beans, roasted veggies, biscuits, and mushroom gravy, and then lemon meringue and pumpkin pie topped with whipped cream (of course, for those of you who followed last year’s weekly reports). We were all very grateful for each other, the Cape, and delicious food, and our stomachs are still happily recovering.
The shower room was cleaned and opened for business, and all campers have reveled in their first showers of the season!
Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors were set up in all living spaces.
We conducted an orientation to safely use and monitor the power system.
Finally, we have a new Cape tradition this season! Courtesy of Kristen and Sonja, we have a daily Cape Journal, where we take turns writing sections for, for instance, camp maintenance, pinniped or seabird activities, and dreams that involve the Cape. We are all enjoying writing with our own flavors, hearing about dreams, and having the journal to refer back to so we can remember what we did three days ago.
Situation Report 3: December 2 – 9, 2024
Weekly Overview
What a week of science! We began perinatal South Shetland Antarctic fur seal (SSAFS) captures and conducted seabird census and egg studies. All of us are eager for more science, and enough of a break to finish reading current novels. Nevertheless, good cheer and good food abound at Cape Shirreff. Unfortunately, there were also two suspected observations of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), reminding us that our little Cape is still connected to the outside world.
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Science Activities
Pinnipeds
This week marks the beginning of our SSAFS attendance study perinatal captures. We successfully captured 4 mother-pup pairs. The mother of each pair received a combination of a micro-VHF flipper tag (which allows us to detect presence or absence from the colony) and a bio-logger that tracks diving activity and location. These instruments will allow us to track the foraging trip lengths and foraging behaviors of the mothers as they make cyclical trips to sea to feed. We will also monitor pup growth throughout the season by weighing the attendance study pups of our attendance study moms 24 hours after their mothers leave for their first foraging trips and again after their fourth or sixth trips. All mothers thus far were previously untagged and received new flipper ID tags. We also collected morphometric measurements and samples from both mother and pup. As per tradition, the penguinas (a.k.a., the seabird team) had the honor of choosing the pup naming theme this year, and decided on characters from the book Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. Pups are named after each capture according to their personalities.
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Including the captures from this week, we currently have 10 females with active micro-VHFs. Six of those females still carry micro-VHFs deployed during past seasons. All 10 females with pups will be monitored as a part of the attendance study throughout the season, tracking their foraging trip lengths as a proxy for the quality of the foraging environment.
We switched this week to counting only pups during our daily SSAFS study beach census. We started the week with 62 pups, and as of December 8 have counted 125 pups! That is 9 more pups than recorded on this date last season.
We continue to conduct daily resights of previously tagged pinnipeds on our study beaches with opportunistic resights on other beaches. To date, we have observed 45 tagged fur seals (10 of known age), 1 tagged Weddell seal, and 1 southern elephant seal with non-AMLR tags.
We did not conduct our weekly phocid census due to our busy capture schedule, but two additional leopard seals were sighted. We will resume the census next week.
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Seabirds
On December 2 and 3, we counted 2,348 chinstrap nests, completing our penguin nest census for the season. This is a slight increase from the past five years in which a census was conducted.
This week, we completed both gentoo and chinstrap egg measurement studies. For these studies, we split into two teams to measure and weigh two eggs from 50 gentoo nests and from 30 chinstrap nests. We would usually measure and weigh eggs from 50 chinstrap nests; however, due to a suspected HPAI-related death in colony 29, samples were not collected from this colony. Gentoo eggs weighed on average 120 g and ranged from 98 to 138 g. Chinstrap eggs are typically a bit smaller; they weighed 102 g on average and ranged from 85 to 119 g.
Amidst the busy science week, we continued daily known-age (KA) penguin nest checks. Sadly, one nest on the west side failed and lost both its eggs; however, 6 new KA nests (1 chinstrap and 5 gentoo) were discovered this week.
In other news, the king penguin we observed upon arrival at the Cape is still hanging out. The ginormous bird (relative to gentoo and chinstrap penguins) has shacked up with the gentoos of colony 10 and is consistently seen next to a KA nest every day. Additionally, it’s been seen in a hunched position day after day almost like it’s guarding something…..oh how Kristen would like to know if it’s hiding an egg under its belly!
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This week, we finished checking all known brown skua territories. So far, only 6 pairs have initiated their nests. Five nests were found with 2 eggs, and one nest was found with 1 egg. Eggs were weighed and measured and we will check on these nests every four days to track their progress throughout the season. Additionally, efforts will be continued to locate and track more brown skua nests as eggs are laid.
Unoccupied Aerial Systems
On December 4, we conducted four unoccupied aerial system (UAS) APH-28 flights over colony 29 and the east and west colonies to collect nest census images. The APH-28 took some troubleshooting to get off the ground, but performed well once it was up and flying. The biggest problem was that it was almost too sunny to fly!
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Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Monitoring
Due to the worldwide spread of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), we have been closely monitoring all colony areas for signs of sick or dead animals. We observed a symptomatic gentoo penguin on Maderas beach on December 6, and a freshly dead adult chinstrap penguin near colony 29 on December 8. Both are being treated as instances of HPAI, and thus those areas will be closed for seven days, with daily monitoring (from afar) to watch for any community spread. Additionally, we have set up boot washing stations at the main camp and the emergency shelter, and will wear KN95 masks during any animal handling.
Weather
This week we were able to get a full seven days’ worth of weather data. Wind speed averaged 9 mph with a maximum of 25 mph. Wind gusts maxed out at 32 mph. One could say it was a blissful week of sunshine and low winds for us science nerds. Wind direction was predominantly from the west (51 percent) followed by winds from the south (19 percent), north (15 percent), and east (14 percent). The temperature at the Cape averaged -0.2oC with a maximum of 4.8oC and a minimum of -2.4oC. Wind chill low was -9.7oC and averaged -4oC. Lots of sunshine and “warm” days for us at the Cape this week.
Camp Maintenance
Most camp maintenance and other camp activities were put on hold this week during our science blitz. However, here are some highlights:
Water
Gutter systems have not yet been set up, as we wait for the weather to be consistently above freezing. We are keeping a barrel inside at all times to thaw. We are using our barrel water as slowly as possible, and melting snow for dishes, showers, and laundry.
Power
The Holt Watters power system operated well this week. All continued to enjoy light on demand (although we’re still remembering where all of the light switches are), and the old fogeys in camp still feel a little thrill when hearing the electronic noise of the HVAC systems that keep the buildings dry.
Other
We have finished clearing the deck of snow, so as to provide for safe deck access and to prevent the snow load from warping the decks.
The propane line at the emergency shelter was leaking, but was fixed and thus heat at the shelter is fully operational again.
We reset the galley duct heater to provide heat in the galley when it is sunny enough and we have enough power. This involved removing an interior panel, and fitting small tools into smaller spaces to access the heater. We also continue to occasionally need to reset the berthing duct heater; it is due to be replaced in January.
We fixed two door handles in the main camp, where the attachment screws had loosened and thus the handles had fallen off. It was a simple repair, except for finding just the right sized Allen wrench. The fur seal lab door handle has not been fixed, however, and we continue to secure the door with a deadbolt when necessary.
We found and recovered one fish box lid and one window cover from under the snow, each of which had blown off during winter. There is still a bit of snow under each, meaning that they blew off fairly recently before we opened camp this season.
Camp Life and Safety
We brought up several totes from the landing beach, and have pulled out some select items. Future runs to the beach may not happen for another few weeks, as the melt has begun and thus there is a large lake in the middle of the ATV path.
The Christmas and Hanukkah gear up has begun. In addition to the ever-present Christmas lights, decorations including snowflakes and a Menorah have joined the remnants of the Thanksgiving decorations in Galley.
On Sunday, the penguinas hosted a fabulous hot ramen lunch in the very clean emergency shelter, with a view of a king penguin!
We watched the first episode of Severance. Our first TV show of the season! Also, we forgot to report last week that our first movie of the season was Shrek 2. Tragically, however, the movie cut out after an hour and a half, and thus we will be waiting on the edge of our seats for the full movie in January.
Situation Report 4: December 10 – 16, 2024
Weekly Overview
This week was a week of transition. On the pinniped side, we finished perinatal captures, our busiest time of the season. On the seabird side, we began several new studies. Additionally, the snow melt has officially begun, and we are rejoicing not needing to use snowshoes. We hope to take advantage of a week or two of lighter outdoor activity to lean into some camp organization activities to prepare for the construction work scheduled for January.
Science Activities
Pinnipeds
This week, we captured our 5th and final mother-pup pair for the 2024-25 South Shetland Antarctic fur seal (SSAFS) attendance study. The mother of each pair received a combination of a micro-VHF flipper tag (which allows us to detect presence or absence from the colony) and a bio-logger that tracks diving activity and location. These instruments will allow us to track the foraging trip lengths and foraging behaviors of the mothers as they make cyclical trips to sea to feed. We will also monitor pup growth throughout the season by weighing the attendance study pups 24 hours after their mothers leave for their first foraging trips and again after their fourth or sixth trips. This year’s attendance study pups are named Andy, Tiny, Violet, Codah, and Tairn. So far, Andy and Codah have been weighed (7.2 kg and 6.5 kg, after weighing 5.4 kg and 4.8 kg just after birth, respectively). We are looking forward to watching and monitoring these pairs and watching the pups grow!
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We now have 12 females with active micro-VHFs: 5 perinatal captures from this season and 7 additional females that have micro-VHFs deployed during past seasons (one more instrumented female was discovered this week). To date, the average foraging trip length for mothers that have completed one trip is 86.4 hours (n = 3, 3.6 days).
During our most recent SSAFS study beach census on December 15, we counted all adult territorial males, adult females, and pups. In total, there were 96 territorial males, 102 females, and 143 pups across our study beaches. On this date last year, we did not census territorial males or adult females, and we counted 145 pups.
We continue to conduct daily resights of previously tagged pinnipeds on our study beaches with opportunistic resights on other beaches. To date, we have observed 56 tagged fur seals (13 of known age), 3 tagged Weddell seals, and 2 tagged southern elephant seals. We also resighted a male fur seal with a distinctly dark/black fur morph that was originally sighted during the 2022-23 field season.
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On Friday, we conducted our second phocid census. We counted 324 southern elephant seals and 23 Weddell seals. We did not count any leopard seals, but we did see a baby leopard seal (small juvenile male, potentially a yearling) snoozing on one of our study beaches for a couple of days.
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This week we began collecting DNA samples from leopard seals and Weddell seals for a study investigating the relationship between diving behaviors and genetic markers across these two species. This study is led by Dr. Carolina Bonin of Hampton University. We have collected 5 Weddell seal DNA samples thus far.
Seabirds
We continue to check known-age (KA) penguin nests every day. All of these nests are attended by a parent that was banded as a chick. Currently, we are monitoring 23 gentoo nests and 8 chinstrap nests. We confirm each day whether the penguin on the nest is the KA bird or its mate, but when we’re patient and/or lucky, a fidgety bird might also reveal how many eggs are on the nest. Sadly, 3 gentoo KA nests failed this past week (i.e., there are no longer birds or eggs on the nest).
On December 12, we measured and weighed the eggs of all KA nests for which the KA bird was female. Ten KA gentoo nests had 2 eggs and one nest had 1 egg, while two KA chinstrap nests had 2 eggs. Monitoring the size and success of KA females’ eggs throughout their lifetime helps us better understand the life cycle and peak breeding ages of these penguins.
This week, we made a concerted effort to find and recover overwintered Global Locator System (GLS) tags. These small ankle tags were deployed on 20 chinstrap penguins last season and have tracked their whereabouts while at sea over the winter. So far we’ve found two tags, but unfortunately only one still had the instrument on it. We will keep looking for these tags in the coming weeks.
On December 11, all of us at Cape Shirreff ventured out to the colonies to take a sneak peek at our favorite oddball bird. Since the king penguin has been sitting amongst the colony 10 gentoos for over two weeks now, we wanted to check if it was incubating an egg and huzzah! It is! The biggest penguin egg Kristen has ever seen was tucked up snugly in the king’s feathers. We now believe she is a female sitting on an unfertilized egg, as we have seen no evidence of a mate. Soon after discovering her egg, we set up a trail camera on her spot to confirm she does not have a mate taking shifts incubating the egg.
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On December 13, we began our first round of instrument deployments. Tags that track location and speed, as well as record video, were placed on the backs of three healthy breeding chinstrap penguins. This will help give us insight as to where and how successful their foraging trips are during the egg incubation phase of their breeding season. The tags will stay on for four to six days until we recover them.
This week, we continued resighting banded penguins. These resights are not limited to penguins sitting on nests, but also include those strolling along the beaches nearby. Although not all banded penguins were banded as chicks (i.e., the bird’s age is unknown), confirming that a penguin has survived yet another year contributes to an overall understanding of colony health.
In the most exciting news of the week, the first freshly hatched gentoo chicks were seen in colony 10! On December 14, at least 5 nests were observed with tiny chicks. In a few weeks, the rest of the colonies will follow suit and will be bustling with the sound of teeny, tiny chirps.
On December 10, we conducted a kelp gull egg and nest census throughout the Cape. Toqui, one of our study areas, had the highest count with 23 nests and 44 eggs . Unfortunately for Kristen, some of the gulls had quite good aim from the sky, and she came out of the nesting area covered in gull guano!
Finally, we settled into a schedule of checking skua territories every four days. This week, two more nests were found, bringing the current total to 12 nests and 23 eggs (11 nests have 2 eggs, and one nest has 1 egg). We will continue to check these nests regularly, as well as explore the many hills on the Cape, searching high and low, for more nests.
Unoccupied Aerial Systems
There were no Unoccupied Aerial System activities this week.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Monitoring
Due to the worldwide spread of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), we have been closely monitoring all colony areas for signs of sick or dead animals. No community spread was seen for the instances reported last week. This week, we observed several potential instances of HPAI: a dead adult kelp gull near one of the gull nesting sites, a dead adult male fur seal on the beach Bahamonde, a very recently dead adult male fur seal on Punta San Telmo, a dead brown skua on the beach Larga, and a sick chinstrap with crusted blood and a swollen head/throat in colony 3. All are being treated as instances of HPAI, and thus all locations will be closed for seven days, with daily monitoring (from afar) to watch for any community spread. We will continue to use boot washing stations at the main camp and the emergency shelter, and as well as wearing KN95 masks during any animal handling.
Weather
This week we got our first rain storm! Woohoo! We experienced several days of sporadic rainfall with the majority falling on December 12. We collected two-thirds (approximately 33 gallons) of a 50-gallon water barrel’s worth of rain water! We have an unreliable method of measuring rainfall due to the sideways nature that it falls here at the Cape; therefore, we will report rainfall measurements as volume collected in our water barrels. This week’s temperature averaged 0.8oC with a high of 2.7oC and a low of -2.4oC. The average windchill was -3.7oC. Wind speed averaged 11 mph with a maximum speed of 26 mph. We experienced predominantly western (47 percent) and northern winds (39.4 percent) with very little from the east (13.2 percent) and south (0.3 percent).
Camp Maintenance
Water
Temperatures have been consistently above freezing, and thus we have set up the rain gutters on all of the main camp buildings. We have not set up the gutters on the emergency shelter.. With the addition of the gutters, and one decent rain storm, water storage is back up to 40 percent of total capacity.
Power
The power system continued to function to its capacity during the past week. Due to frequent sunshine and not terribly overcast days, we were able to regularly run the heaters and other power-hungry appliances.
Other
We spent an afternoon moving items and fishboxes (and our giant new generator) on the beach to stabilize them in the melting snow on the rocky landing beach.
The snow melted enough for us to reorganize our fuel depot. Overwinter winds were strong enough to blow two of the fishboxes off of the deck. After confirming that no fuel had spilled in the fishboxes, we bailed/dumped out the snow (now water) that had accumulated, and moved the fishboxes fully back onto the deck.
For the first time in many seasons, the exterior of the camp windows were washed and squeegeed! Our beautiful views inspired us to wash the main galley windows so that we can see the glorious seals, penguins, icebergs, and other spectacular views from the galley table.
Sonja installed a toilet paper roll holder in one of the outhouses. The delicately placed, stainless steel, s-shaped holder seriously classes up the joint.
We also installed a paper towel holder in the galley to help facilitate kitchen cleanliness.
Camp Life and Safety
Now that perinatal captures are complete and there is more time for camp life, we have jumped at the opportunity to continue to settle into our new world. Sam finally unpacked his final bag and organized all of the spare pillows and foam stored in the spare bunk next to him, and Jae has created new organization systems for the galley and supply room spaces.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas at Cape Shirreff! The tree has been placed and decorated in the reading nook, and stockings and more lights have been placed on the surrounding walls. Additionally, paper snowflakes now adorn most of the windows, with more being made each day. Christmas music has still been surprisingly lacking, but will undoubtedly become commonplace with less than ten days until Christmas.
We are rapidly making our way through Severance, and will likely finish the season right after we send off this report. We are becoming a well-oiled machine in setting up the projector and cozy chairs, as well as preparing the ice cream and popcorn for viewing time.
The Cape Journal continues to be a hit, and now includes a daily ‘if your day was…what kind would it be?’ question. Past questions have been: “if your day was a type of sunshine,” and “if your day was a burger topping.”
Situation Report 5: December 16 – 22, 2024
Weekly Overview
This was a week of finales and of firsts. We completed several pinniped studies, the first round of seabird instrument deployments, and watching Severance. We also took advantage of a weather day to introduce half of the (human) Cape Shirreff population to The Lord of the Rings. We continue to settle into and enjoy the Holt Watters Field Camp, as well as prepare for the arrival of more campers in less than two weeks.
Science Activities
Pinnipeds
This week we continued to monitor our five mother-pup pairs as a part of the South Shetland Antarctic fur seal (SSAFS) attendance study. So far, all females have completed at least one foraging trip and one has completed two foraging trips. To monitor pup growth throughout the season, each study pup was weighed approximately 24 hours after its mom left for her first foraging trip. Last week, Andy and Codah weighed in at 7.2 kg and 6.5 kg, respectively. This week, Violet, Tairn, and Tiny weighed in at 7.5 kg, 8.5 kg, and 7.4 kg, after weighing 5.6 kg, 6.6 kg, and 5.7 kg during their initial perinatal weights, respectively.
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We continue to monitor 12 SSAFS females with pups and active micro-VHFs for trip length duration. To date, the average trip length is 85.6 hours (n = 9, 3.8 days). On average, trip lengths have been 89.6 hours (n = 6) for the first trip, 92.3 hours (n = 2) for the second trip, and 99.52 hours (n = 1) for the third trip.
We conducted our final SSAFS study beach census on December 20. We counted all adult territorial males, adult females, and pups. In total there were 77 territorial males, 101 females, and 163 pups across our active study beaches. On this date last year, we did not count territorial males or adult females, but we counted 160 pups.
During this week’s phocid census on December 21, we counted 450 southern elephant seals, 36 Weddell seals, and 3 adult female leopard seals. In addition to the three leopard seals, we also spotted a leopard seal hauled out on an iceberg that was grounded close to the shoreline of Punta San Telmo.
The three leopard seals counted during this week’s phocid census were all big adult females that we have seen during past seasons. We suspect these (and possibly additional) large females may begin hunting SSAFS pups and penguin chicks in the coming days or weeks. We remain concerned about the continuing effect leopard seal hunting may have on the SSAFS population at Cape Shirreff, which has declined rapidly over the last several years.
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We continue to conduct our daily resights for tagged pinnipeds on our study beaches with opportunistic resights on other beaches. To date, we have observed 58 tagged fur seals (15 of known age), 3 tagged Weddell seals, 3 tagged southern elephant seals, and 2 tagged leopard seals.
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We continue to collect DNA samples from Weddell seals and leopard seals for a genetics study led by Dr. Carolina Bonin of Hampton University. This study aims to investigate the relationship between diving behaviors and genetic markers across the two species. We have not collected any samples from leopard seals yet this season. We collected five additional samples from Weddell seals this week, bringing our total number of samples to 10 and concluding our Weddell seal sampling for this season.
Seabirds
We checked all known-age (KA) nests daily this week. This involves walking the perimeter of every colony and beach to resight every penguin with a band. With this information, we can determine survival rates, among other things. To date, one known-age gentoo in colony 10 has lost both its eggs and failed. However, eight chinstrap and 24 gentoo KA nests remain active.
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In the midst of a heavy snow and wind storm, we recovered the video logger and GPS/accelerometer instruments we deployed on three chinstrap adults last week. These videos will provide information about the penguins’ foraging success while in the incubation stage of their breeding season.
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After recovering the instruments from the chinstrap penguins, we downloaded the data and cleaned and reprogrammed the tags. On December 21 and 22, we deployed these instruments on three gentoo penguins. The instruments will again provide us insight into the gentoos’ foraging locations and success for four to six days.
On December 22, we saw the first chinstrap chicks of the season! In other exciting news, we saw a macaroni penguin visitor in colony 10! It only stuck around for one day but it was nice to see it.
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This week, we checked all 12 of the known brown skua nests twice . All still have two eggs except territory 14B, which lost its last remaining egg and failed. Skua checks will continue every four days throughout the remainder of the season.
Unoccupied Aerial Systems
There were no Unoccupied Aerial System activities this week.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Monitoring
Due to the worldwide spread of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), we have been closely monitoring all colony areas for signs of sick or dead animals. No community spread has been seen for the instances reported last week. However, we observed several potential new instances of HPAI: a dead brown skua on the beach Chungungo and a recently dead juvenile male fur seal below penguin colony 14. All are being treated as instances of HPAI, and thus all locations will be closed for seven days, with daily monitoring (from afar) to watch for any community spread. We will continue to use boot washing stations at main camp and at the emergency shelter, and will continue to wear KN95 masks during any animal handling.
Weather
“I said brrrrr, it’s cold in here! There must be some wind in the atmosphere!” December 19 marks the windiest day that we have experienced so far this season, and we remained inside the camp for safety. Wind speed averaged 37 mph and gusts averaged 52 mph, although we measured speeds as high as 62 mph! Although wind speed was high on December 19, the rest of the week was moderate with an average wind speed of 15 mph and an average gust speed of 21 mph. Wind direction was predominantly from the east (67 percent) followed by winds from the north (16 percent), west (13 percent), and south (4 percent). The air temperature was chilly this week as well, with an average of 0oC, a maximum of 2.7oC, and a minimum of -2oC. The windchill averaged -4.8oC with a minimum of -10.1oC.
Camp Maintenance
Water
Cape Shirreff threw us for a temperature loop, with several days of snow during the past week. However, the gutters all held up well, and we hold out hope for warmer temperatures and rain during the coming week. While no official water inventory was conducted this week, we continue to melt snow for showers and laundry until we get a few rain storms under our water barrel belts.
Power
The power system continued to function at capacity during the past week. We have been experimenting with how to get the duct heaters to stay on, and what we can get away with running during the day while still giving the power system enough time to fully charge the battery bank before the evening. We have switched to almost solely using the electric kettle, and keeping the HVAC systems running at a consistent low speed to keep air flowing to keep the duct heaters on.
Other
We are still waiting for the ATV path to be melted enough to reasonably drive the ATV to the landing beach to start bringing up construction and other shipment materials. As the snow slowly melts, some of the fish boxes on the landing beach were starting to tip, so we took another pass at stabilizing all boxes and materials on the beach.
A lighter science schedule this week enabled us to spend several afternoons organizing several spaces. We marveled at the amount of pasta and rice on station and the amount of space in the lab that let us nicely organize all of the pinniped and Unoccupied Aerial System science gear in that space. We also began to tackle the workshop to get it ready for additional science and construction activities in January. Additionally, the gear closets at the emergency shelter were cleaned.
December 17 marked the first mop of the season! We mopped the tile floors in the galley, supply room, and the emergency shelter.
We replaced the door handle on the fur seal lab, which had broken several weeks ago. We had been securing the door using the deadbolt, and Sam already feels more relaxed from not worrying about losing the deadbolt key.
We set up the foot pump system for the fur seal lab sink, which (like the one in berthing) uses pressure from the foot pump to pump water from a bucket through the sink faucet.
We staged wooden pallets and plywood to hopefully set up the Weatherhaven tent during the next week as a staging area for the construction team that will arrive in a couple of weeks.
Camp Life and Safety
The last of the artichokes, green onions, and sweet potatoes were used and/or mercifully disposed of this week. We have been doing an admirable job of making meals with the food that is closest to going bad.
While this week marked the end of some foods, it also marked the beginning of true bread making! While Sam has made basic bread several times (the recipe is literally called “the easiest loaf of bread you’ll ever bake”), Jae has taken the bread reins and already has a successfully fermenting sourdough starter and has baked a whole wheat sourdough loaf. She also has baked potato and rosemary bread, and cheesy ciabatta. We are rolling in delicious bread.
We continue to decorate and plan for our holiday celebration!
Situation Report 6: December 23 – 29, 2024
Weekly Overview
This week we celebrated winter holidays: see below for details. We also scienced the heck out of Cape Shirreff: in addition to our regular resights and censuses, we recovered the last of the tags deployed on penguins, conducted the Cape-wide South Shetland Antarctic fur seal (SSAFS) pup census, and watched penguin chicks begin to hatch in force. Finally, we ended the week by focusing on preparing for the arrival of the MY Hanse Explorer and our much-anticipated colleagues.
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Science Activities
Pinnipeds
We continue to monitor our five mother-pup pairs for the SSAFS attendance study. Each of our study females has completed at least one foraging trip, while three have completed two trips and one completed three trips. We will continue to monitor pup growth throughout the study by weighing each study pup after its mom has completed four foraging trips. The pups have started to explore their resident beaches more widely, with several taking advantage of the snow melt puddles and tide pools for swimming practice!
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This week we are down to 10 SSAFS mothers with active micro-VHF recorders. Two of our females had micro-VHFs from the 2021-22 and 2022-23 field seasons. Both of their micro-VHFs lost battery power and stopped transmitting earlier this season. However, we were able to collect two years’ worth of data from both of these females while their micro-VHFs were active. Unfortunately, one of our current seasons’ attendance study female’s micro-VHF recorder has stopped transmitting. Fortunately, she is also carrying a time-depth recorder that records her foraging trip lengths, so we will still obtain valuable data from this seal.
To date, the average foraging trip length across the 10 monitored SSAFS females is 108.18 hours (4.5 days, n = 21). On average, the first foraging trip was 109.6 hours (n = 10), the second trip was 110.6 hours (n = 6), the third trip was 107.5 hours (n = 3), the fourth trip was 99.3 hours (n = 1), and the fifth trip was 90.2 hours (n = 1).
We completed our annual Cape-wide pup census this week. During this census, three observers hiked all of the breeding beaches around the Cape and counted each pup. This year we counted 415 pups! That is five more pups than last year (410) and the first census count since the late 2000s where we have observed an increase in pups born from the previous year.
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We continue to conduct our daily resights for tagged pinnipeds on our study beaches with opportunistic resights on other beaches. To date, we have observed 60 tagged fur seals (16 of known age), 4 tagged Weddell seals, 4 tagged southern elephant seals, and 3 tagged leopard seals. One of the new Weddell seals seen this week has not been seen since 2017, while one of the new known-age fur seals was on a beach that we don’t normally survey, so we hadn’t seen this seal for several seasons. Also, Sam successfully tagged our first leopard seal of the season, a juvenile male. We hope we see this seal again this season and in future seasons.
During this week’s phocid census, we counted 452 southern elephant seals, 24 Weddell seals, 2 leopard seals, and 1 crabeater seal! Our first census crabeater of the season! The crabeater was initially sighted on a study beach and was found sleeping in the penguin colonies the next day.
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We continue to seek sampling opportunities to collect DNA from Weddell seals and leopard seals for a genetics study led by Dr. Carolina Bonin of Hampton University. This study aims to investigate the relationship between diving behaviors and genetic markers across the two species. We have not collected any leopard seal samples yet, but we have collected 10 Weddell seal samples.
Seabirds
This week was a big one in the colonies as both gentoo and chinstrap eggs continue to hatch. In the chinstrap colonies, six of eight known-age (KA) nests now have chicks, and two others are still active with eggs. Among the gentoos, we continue to monitor 21 KA nests daily. Two of those nests this week hatched chicks, but sadly, two others lost both of their eggs and failed.
After last week with just a few peeps (the sounds of freshly hatched chinstrap chicks), colony 29—the largest chinstrap colony with over 800 nests—has now erupted into a cacophony of chirping chicks and swooning parents. We estimate that as of December 29, chinstrap penguins have reached peak hatch, meaning that more than half of all active nests have chicks.
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This week, we recovered instruments that record location, speed, and video from three breeding gentoo penguins. These instruments were deployed for 4 - 6 days and provide insight into foraging trip locations and lengths during the egg incubation phase of the breeding season.
We continue to check skua territories and nests every four days. Since last week, it appears that four nests have failed, meaning where there was once a nest with one or two eggs, there are now no eggs or chicks. We will continue to check these areas every four days for activity. As of the last check, eight nests remain active, and eggs have begun to hatch. During the December 29 check, we observed three nests with one egg beginning to pip (small cracks) and one nest that already had two chicks.
In other skua news, the whole Cape Shirreff team took a beautiful hike out to Punta Oeste on December 23 to see how the skuas in that territory were faring. Although a banded skua was sighted, no nests or breeding pairs were found. One dead skua was seen close to where a nest had been last year. Despite the low number of skua sightings, the hike was still a great adventure.
Unoccupied Aerial Systems
There were no Unoccupied Aerial System activities this week.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Monitoring
Due to the worldwide spread of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), we have been closely monitoring all study beaches and colony areas for signs of sick or dead animals, and checking all other beaches/locations when in those areas. No community spread has been seen for the instances reported last week. This week, we observed several potential instances of HPAI: a dead brown skua in territory 33 and a recently dead juvenile fur seal below penguin colony 3 on Bahamonde South. All are being treated as instances of HPAI, and thus all locations will be closed for seven days, with daily monitoring (from afar) to watch for any community spread. We will continue to use boot washing stations at main camp and at the emergency shelter, and will continue to wear KN95 masks during any animal handling.
Weather
This week’s average temperature was 1.2oC, but it felt much colder than that due to all the fog we hiked through during our science excursions. There’s something about wet air that chills to the bone. The high for the week was 3.2oC and the low was -0.7oC. The average wind chill was -3.2oC with a low of -6.2oC. It was one of those weeks where we couldn’t decide if we were too hot or too cold. Sigh, we do love the Cape for keeping us on our toes. Our average wind speed was 12 mph with a maximum of 29 mph. The average gust was 18 mph with a maximum of 41 mph. Wind was predominantly from the west (54.8 percent) followed by winds from the north (36.3 percent), east (8.3 percent) and very little from the south (0.6 percent). Christmas day brought us a bit of snow in the morning and one of our colder days, with an average temperature of 1.2oC and an average wind chill of -3.6oC.
Camp Maintenance
Water
A few evenings of rain this week gave us enough water to put away the snow (melting) pot. As of December 27, we were at 53 percent of our water storage capacity. Camp is rejoicing in the new freedom of no snow pot and cardboard (for thawing snow) on the galley floor.
Power
Despite a foggy week, the camp power system performed admirably. We had to be extra careful about only running heaters during midday, but the battery bank held us through each night, and the photovoltaic system collected enough energy to fully charge the battery bank by noon each day.
Other
While construction on the Holt Watters field camp was mostly completed in February 2024, we have a few finishing touches to complete this year. One member of last year’s construction team will be at Cape Shirreff during January to seal the roofs of the fur seal laboratory and the emergency shelter, to install vented propane heaters, and to upgrade the power system. This week, using the ATV and sleds, we moved all construction materials from the landing beach up to the lab space. We also unwrapped the pallets and plywood that make up the base of the Weatherhaven tent that will stage these materials to let them dry as much as possible, and next week we will assemble the tent.
Although holiday celebrations and other camp life activities filled the majority of this week, we also accomplished several minor maintenance tasks. We finished setting up the foot pump sink in the fur seal lab, and hung several new coat hooks in the bunk house. The snow has melted enough that we finally put the snow shoes into storage. We also have continued to unpack totes and organize camp items that were brought up from the beach with the construction materials.
Camp Life and Safety
This week, while science was our priority, we also celebrated winter holidays with lots of cooking and baking, along with enjoying our elaborate feasts, exchanging some small gifts, playing games, dancing, and watching movies.
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To prepare for the arrival of new chess-playing campmates in January, Sonja and Sam played the first game of chess at the Cape this season. While it was not the finest match by either player, Sonja prevailed, and is the current Cape chess champion.