’2009-11-11′, ‘Elephant Seal’, 5, ‘First I have to apologize, I have been entering a lot of observations lately under the”Marine Life” category, and either this isn’t a public heading or all those entries have been lost to cyberspace.Recap:For the last week there have been 3 intermediate-sized elephant seal cows staying together near the boat house. One has rear flipper tags X201 and X202. The other two animals are a bit smaller than her. They alternate between an ever-rearranging sleeping pile to swimming around together in the shallows around the boat ramp. I have photos and footage of both. One of the smaller female’s right eye is milky/bluish, much like Slash’s bad eye. They are most often hauled out, but were swimming together as recently as yesterday morning. A fourth cow, this one a large adult was spotted yesterday hauled out on the intertidal island on the SE corner of the island. She has a distinctive bite scar on her lower back on the right side. She was observed this morning in the tidal channel partially submerged, facing the incoming water. As the tide reached a certain level she swam off. At the same time, a fifth large cow was observed in the shallows on the W side of the jetty. I photographed her smelling the air with her head raised out of the water, and I believe from that perspective she would have been able to see the smaller 3 by the boat house. However, there was no direct path that she could take and she eventually left. The only route elephant seals can take to access the majority of the island is the boat ramp on the E side of the jetty. This fifth cow had a distinctive long scar on the back right of her head/neck. I don’t know if there was this much elephant seal activity last year. I believe 5 females may be the most observed on Great Race Island on record.’, ‘Ryan’, ’11:45:09 ,