Seal tag distribution from 15 Ocean2ice seals. Source: Mike Fedak, SMRU (http://www.smru.st-andrews.ac.uk/)
Happily for us, none of the seals has left the Amundsen Sea and they have done a marvelous job of spreading distributing themselves through out the Sea and Pine Island Bay, all of which is very promising. It will be fascinating to watch their distribution as the sea ice advances moving into the winter months. In the mean time, the data comes streaming in. We can observe the warm water on the continental shelf, usually below 500-600 m. From the two graphs below, the figure out left shows profiles from a Weddell seal female and on the right from an Elephant seal female. From the graphs, you can see how much deeper the elephant seals go when they dive!
 Source: Mike Fedak, SMRU (http://www.smru.st-andrews.ac.uk/ |
 Source: Mike Fedak, SMRU (http://www.smru.st-andrews.ac.uk/ |
Weddell seal female (left) dive profiles and (right) elephant seal female dive profiles. Source: Mike Fedak, SMRU (http://www.smru.st-andrews.ac.uk/