SEALS FOR V.S.

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30289, 15 November 1963, Page 8

SEALS FOR V.S.

Christchurch Stop Today Six Weddell seals arrived at the Christchurch airport about 4 a.m. yesterday aboard a United States Navy Hercules aircraft. They were on a three-day 12,000-mile flight to Brooklyn, New York. The seals are being flown to the New York aquarium for further study by the associate curator, Dr. C. Ray. Dr. Ray and two associates have spent the last three weeks and a half studying seal heartbeats, heat regulations, eating and nursing habits and other phenomena in an effort to learn more about the little known Weddell seals and to understand how they will react to captivity in an environment greatly different from that to which they are naturally adapted. The seals were flown from Christchurch to New York by way of Pago Pago, Hawaii, and California aboard a Super Constellation. These seals are the most cold-living of mammals and can maintain normal body temperatures—equal to that of humans—while swimming in the icy waters surrounding the Antarctic continent or resting on the surface of the ice in high winds and subzero temperatures. The ability of seals to dive to great depths, to conserve and dissipate body heat, to satisfy their high metabolic energy requirements, and to maintain their water balance in a saline medium, make seals an increasingly important research tool to the physiologist and ecologist. Weddell seals are among the most highly evolved of the 47 species and sub-species of the order Pinnepedia, which includes seals, sea lions, and walruses. Tnere are four species of Antarctic seals, of which the Weddell is not the most abundant, but certainly the most frequently observed. The other species are the Ross, crabeater, and leopard seals. An estimated 200,000 to 500.000 Weddell seals are believed to frequent the ice-fringed coast of Antarctica. Although about 100 Weddells were studied in some manner or other by Dr. Ray’s team since its arrival at McMurdo Station on October 18. only six seals, with a total weight of approximately one ton and a half, were selected for removal to the New York aquarium. These are an adult female and her male pup. an orphan female pup, a yearling male, a three-year-old male, and a four-year-old female.