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 has been taken offline, however. A snapshot of the database was taken in January, 1995, and is linked at the provided URL. For access, contact the Australian Antarctic Data Centre. 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

A variety of different chemical restraints, or anaesthetics, were trialed on Southern Elephant Seals at Heard Island and Macquarie Island. The trials were performed on female and juvenile seals, in their pre-moult stages. Further information can be found in the papers listed in the reference section below. The chemicals used in this study include: doxapram ketamine xylazine midazolam pethidine thiopentone cyclohexamine based compounds diazepam tiletamine zolazepam 4-aminopyridine Sarmazenil Yohimbine The fields in this dataset are: Anaesthetic Antagonist Dose Mass Time Heart Rate Respiratory Rate Side Effects pH PvO2 PvCO2 HCO3 Total CO2