Seals Inland

The most surprising biological findings were many seal carcases along the valley floor, from the coast to 45 miles inland. Seals have been found inland in Antarctica before, but never in such large numbers.

We found 99. Some were quite recent, and still soft enough to allow post-mortem dissection; others were very old, so that they had been dehydrated and then eroded by wind and sand until only a few bones remained. Lots of interesting problems are posed.

How old the seals are we hope to find out from radio-carbon dating of the specimens we brought back. Why do they migrate inland? We do know that they eat on the journey—nothing except sand and gravel—but we don't know how long they take.

Because so much of Dick Barwick's time was taken up in helping with the survey work—we took rounds of angles from 10 points in the dry-valley block and on the coast—he could not devote as much attention to the freshwater biology as it deserved.

But we did collect lichens during these survey journeys, noting, yet another apparent anomaly, that they were confined to areas above about 3500 feet in altitude, and we spent a few days collecting specimens from the small lakes near the base camp.