On a remote island, a colony's future is sealed

By Liz Minchin
January 31, 2005
spent three 
days perched 
high on 
Rocks, in the 
middle of 
Bass Strait, 
during the 
seal count.

Four researchers spent three days perched high on Judgment Rocks, in the middle of Bass Strait, during the seal count.
Photo: Sandy Scheltema


Marine biologists risk their lives to count this year's crop of seal pups in Bass Strait.

Aleks Terauds stinks. It's one of the hazards of his job, which each year has him camping for days on remote, excrement-covered rocks in the middle of Bass Strait, surrounded by thousands of noisy seals.

The marine biologist and three other researchers have just returned from the Tasmanian Government's annual seal count, an 11-day trip that even he concedes has left him and his clothes smelling "pretty ordinary".

"When you're spending your time with musky fur seals and clambering around in seal shit and goop, you pick up a pretty full-on smell," said Mr Terauds, 33, who led the expedition.

"We get used to it because we work in these conditions regularly but other people do find it confronting. You can never get rid of the smell completely from your clothes, which is why we generally do a run to St Vinnie's for a new set of clothes each time we go out."

The day The Age sailed out to watch the seal counters at work, they were camped on top of a big rock - called, appropriately enough, Big Rock - in the Judgment Rocks group about 36 nautical miles south-east of the tip of Wilsons Promontory.

A swift current rocked our boat heavily from side to side but otherwise it was an unusually still day for the tempestuous Bass Strait, with a grey, overcast sky and a light northerly breeze.

The seals' distinctive calls drifted across the water, sounding like an off-key brass band playing in a paddock full of young lambs.

It was the researchers' third day camped atop the 35-metre-high rock and they had almost finished their tally of the seal pups scattered around the steep ledges beneath them. Their first job was to mark the seal pups by bleaching a small patch of hair on the pups' heads, which makes it easier to keep track of which seals they have already seen.

Until they learn to swim, the greatest threat to the pups is bad weather."

"Counting the pups is the best way to measure the overall fur seal population, because they have to stay on land for a good few months before they can swim properly so, unlike the adults, they're not always coming and going into the water," Mr Terauds said.


"Even this year we've had reports of dead pups on the north coast of Tasmania, which have probably been washed off Tenth Island. At some low-lying places like Reid Rocks, a big storm at the wrong time of year can wash off up to three-quarters of the colony and decimate the population. But Judgment Rocks is a beauty for the pups; they hardly ever get washed off."

For the researchers, the main health risk is sunstroke from the rays reflecting off the sea and the white-stained rock face.

But working in Bass Strait can be deadly. In April 2003 one of Mr Terauds' colleagues, marine biologist Hamish Saunders, 26, was swept out to sea and killed when a massive storm hit Pedra Branca Island, about 25 kilometres south of Tasmania.

Mr Terauds and another of this year's seal counters, David Pemberton, were also part of the four-member research team monitoring the island's skinks and seabirds, and had to cling to the rock for an hour with monstrous waves pounding around them before a rescue helicopter winched them to safety.

"I've never seen conditions like that and I've spent a lot of time in the Southern Ocean," Mr Terauds said. But not even that terrifying experience has put him off returning to the sea.

"It's a pretty testing environment, sometimes it's not fun. But on the whole it's an amazing experience, to sit on top of a rock with a seal colony all around you and watch them interacting. You really feel like you're seeing stuff most people can never see."