Cal Poly Team Is Working To Uncover Weddell Seal Secrets

Featured Image Credit: Knowledge Era
By Sarah Sharkey

A team of Cal Poly graduate students and professors just returned from a 10-week trip to Antarctica. The team stayed at the McMurdo Station, which is the main American research base in Antarctica. The focus of their mission was to learn more about the Weddell seal.

This 10-week expedition was the first of two 10-week seasons that the team will spend studying these somewhat mysterious creatures. The two questions they focused on were: how do Weddell seal pups stay warm and how to they develop their ability to dive?

Image Credit: Gaelen Marsden

Dr. Heather Liwanag, a lead advisor on the project, was surprised that these two fairly basic questions had not yet been answered. Her reaction to the knowledge gap was “There are questions that you think we’ve already answered and we haven’t. And that’s what drives a lot of really cool science, is saying, ‘How do we not know the answer to that yet? Someone should answer that!’ And sometimes that someone has to be you.”

Liwanag and her team discovered that Weddell seals lack a certain type of fat, brown fat, that is found in other Antarctic seals. The special fat is designed to keep animals warm, so without that fat it is uncertain how Weddell seals remain warm.

After two field seasons in Antarctic, the team will hopefully have an answer that will fill this knowledge gap in science.

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