Abstract:
The objectives for this project were:
The project aims to quantify the patterns of dispersal and survival of newly weaned southern elephant seal pups to provide information on position at sea and foraging behaviour of the pups once they leave Macquarie Island, and to examine how this is related to position at sea and foraging behaviour in the second year. This information will be used to test the
... hypothesis that first year survival is a consequence of the young animals exploiting different foraging grounds to adults, and that fishing activity on the Campbell Plateau may be a contributing factor. In addition, stable isotope analysis and fatty acid signature analysis will be used to examine differences in foraging behaviour from animals while they are at sea.
The raw data from this project is added to the long term database described by the metadata records 'Macquarie Island Elephant Seal Populations 1950-1965', and 'Macquarie Island Elephant Seal Populations 1985 Onwards'. This database is currently not available to the general public (URL provided below).
A number of papers have been produced from this project. Some of these papers are included in the reference section below.
The data collected for the database is as follows:
Seal Number
Status (new or resight)
Date
Location
Age Class
Status (cow, beachmaster, pregnant cow, dead etc)
Sex
Weight
Length
Size
Back Fat
Flipper
Body Water
Time Depth Recorder 
