Donna and the boy are back in New Jersey and Maryland for the big family Thanksgiving reunion. I got back Sunday night from our field trip - a few days early, a real treat. We were very successful, catching enough puppies to meet our sampling goals while working at just one site in Prince William Sound. We only had one weather day, during which we sat at anchor in the bay while just around the corner on the outside there were waves over 6 feet high pounding the haulout. After several years focused on capturing older juveniles, I had sort-of forgotten just how quickly we can work when catching the smaller pups. All captures made before noon, in less than 2 hours each day.

I got in plenty of capture skiff driver training with Greg and Jamie helping me, and we were quite pleased with how well the new weed line method worked. I don't know why it's called a "weed line". We had the capture line connected to a spool on the capture skiff all the time. We'd hand over the capture line to the divers, back away slowly and wait. When an animal was leashed by the divers, we already had the capture line in-hand and so avoided the usual nearshore chase to retrieve the capture line. The only trick was learning to lay the line in the current so that it did not drag on the divers too much; lots of experimentation and back-and-forth with the skiff. Lots of fun, and pretty effective, even in the 2-3 foot seas we had one morning. It might be harder in rougher water or with larger animals.. we'll see. Our divers are getting very good at making targeted captures of individual marked sea lions. This is good news for our recapture trip planned in March-April.

Just got home from Thanksgiving and Lance and Cheryl's house, with Carrie, Kevin and Tami. It was a great meal and we enjoyed playing games, cooking and talking. There was football and a dog show on TV too. They roasted a very fine turkey.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.