Spatial distribution, demography and productivity of southern elephant seals of the Falkland Islands (2015-2019)

The dataseries includes data from surveys caried out during the breeding and the moulting season in the following places: Carcass Island, Saunders Island, Pebble Island and Islet, Kelp Point. Additionally, anecdotal observations of elephant seals carried out all over the Falklands by local people and visitors have been assembled and sources of information about elephant seals distribution in the past have been reviewed. These are the main results of this ongoing project: 1) The only notable breeding colonies with reliable counts are Sea Lion Island (650 breeding females), Carcass Island (175) and Saunders Island (13); 2) Breeding surely happens in some other places, but numbers are unknown; 3) Total Falklands breeding population is likely very small, a smaller that the main populations of the South George stock; 4) The Falklands are an hotspot for elephant seal moulting, the number of moulters is much greater than number of breeders, and the number of established moulting sites is much greater than the number of breeding colonies; 5) The vast majority of moulters are alien seals coming from other populations of the South Georgia stock; 6) We have confirmed resights of breeders coming to the Falklands for moulting belonging to the following populations: Valdes Peninsula, South Georgia, King George Island, Livingstone Island, Elephant Islands. All together, these results show a much greater presence of elephant seals in the Falklands than is usually assumed. Further information is available on the research group website, www.eleseal.org.