Poor seal!

The weekly Monday morning meeting was delayed until yesterday (Tuesday) because we had been busy with the Royal Naval ship in all day and most people were involved in various activities throughout the day. I walked over to KEP for the meeting at 0830 through light rain, and when it was all finished, Katie - the fish scientist - asked me if I would help her with their base Burns' Supper in the evening. She wanted to cook haggis, neeps and tatties, as we had MacSweens' haggis in the frozen food store, and I volunteered to make Cullen skink to start with, and Sarah, one of the Government Officers' wives, said she would make cranachan. With no other ships in till next Sunday I had time to get involved with the cooking, which included a vegetarian choice for a couple of people on base who wouldn't want to eat haggis. As we were getting on with the preparations I looked out of the window and saw a fur seal on the waters edge, scratching at its poor neck, and I could see that it had some sort of strap or rope tight around its neck, cutting into the skin. We radioed for the seal scientist, who was just about to set off in one of the boats so he had his boatsuit on, and he came with a couple of other people and they walked into the sea to drive the seal up onto the beach - if it had gone into the sea there would have been no chance of getting the 'noose' off it. I ran round the end of the building to try and photograph them removing it and as I turned the corner the seal raced past me - I was desperately wondering if I should rugby-tackle it, but they had in fact already caught it and removed what turned out to be the loop of rope and had set the seal free. This loop had inevitably come from fishermen discarding rubbish into the sea, the seal had played with it and got it round its neck, and as it grew the rope got tighter and tighter until it would eventually have, at worse, strangled it, and at least cut through its skin and set up a terrible infection which might still have killed it. You can see from the picture that the skin was badly damaged, and I just hope that the young seal will recover from its awful injuries.

I walked back to Grytviken for lunch and to put a couple of cakes into the oven (I'd had the fruit soaking in tea overnight already) - it had started to snow in the morning and carried on until well into the afternoon. On the way back I stood watching some young fur seals playing on a rock, with an elephant seal half-submerged in the water near them, so I paddled into the water to get a closer look and the furries started to swim around me - dear little things! Sometimes it takes me ages to walk the 1km between the two settlements as I stop to watch some seals, and talk to others (good job no-one can hear me!!)

I had a short snooze after lunch, then back along to KEP, two more fruit loaves into the oven there, and I made the soup. Katie wrapped the haggis up in foil and put them into a baking tin with some water, which was a really easy way of cooking them. Then she made two oatmeal loaves to go with the soup, and we put the veggies on to cook. She had asked everyone to wear tartan, but there is not much of that around. Alistair, the seal scientist, folded 2 white pillowcases up lengthways and safety-pinned them onto his navy shirt in a cross over his chest (a Saltyre!), Pat - one of the Government Officers wore an old BAS-issue tartan shirt as a kilt, with a wide paint-brush hanging from his waist as a sporran (!), Matt wore a large Saltyre as a skirt, and Sarah a tartan travel rug wrapped around her waist and pinned as a long skirt. I was wearing a purple polo shirt so went as a thistle, and there were a couple of other check shirts. Alistair brought out his bottle of Laphroaig and generously let us all have a tot to toast the haggis, and Pat did the address to the haggis after carrying it ceremoniously into the dining room along with Rob, playing the fiddle. It was a good meal, with Sarah's cranachan being a lot more successful than the awful one I made for Hogmanay!! Some of us then played Bananagrams in the bar, before the Museumies headed back 'home' in the near dark, along the track and through the remaining fur seals. I was exhausted!!