Name: How Antarctica’s Cutest Baby Seals Grow Up I Antarctic Extremes
Uploaded: 2025-04-29T04:20:35.000Z
Duration: 10 min 51 s
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It seems like everyone has an idea of what Antarctica looks like.

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For us, it was this endless landscape of white as far as the eye could see.

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But when we got here, we were greeted with something different.

One of its most striking features is its sea ice.

It's also one of the most dangerous, covered in cracks that open straight to the freezing water below.

But if you take a closer look at these cracks, you might be rewarded with the sight of a This is what we've been waiting for.

This is what we have been training for all week long.

We're finally going to get to go out on the sea ice and meet with a scientist who is studying seals out there.

Whenever someone falls over into a crack, they actually name the crack after them.

If I could have a crack named after me, that would be great.

You know, it'd be like Crack Arlo, or Arlo's Crack, kind of has a different ring to it.

We're riding to Big Razorback Island, where a colony of Weddell seals live.

They are the southernmost mammal on the planet.

And we've come at the best time of year, because it's pupping season.

And we can get surprisingly close to them.

He was probably born maybe four days ago.

Jay Rotella and his team are researching seal families, a study that's been going on for just over 50 years.

So the two nipples are back towards us, and he or she may find them.

And it will be 250 pounds or so, 220 pounds within a month.

So it'll go from about the size of a second grader to an NFL football player in 30 days.

My friend Arlo wants to have a crack named after him.

But you have to fall into a crack to do that.

We said we're going to find a boy seal, and you can name it Arlo.

The seal colony is in the middle of one of the most breathtaking landscapes.

Where the sea ice flows around an island.

Here, pressure builds in the ice, creating these towering icy sculptures, appropriately called pressure ridges.

Now, what is probably most stunning about these pressure ridges is how similar it actually looks to water.

You actually look at it, and you can imagine like waves crashing against the surface.

Because among these ridges are weak points in the ice, cracks that allow the seals to get in and out of the water, which probably means that walking through here is a pretty stupid idea.

When you think about where we're living, and what that pup is about to face, only about two out of ten will survive to be adults.

The scientist part says, I hope you get all the help you can.

That's one of the things we're studying, is all the things mothers do for their babies.

So we're trying to figure out the recipe for success.

These female seals are very faithful to these places for their pupping.

So they'll come in during October, and then they'll be here and raise their pups for a month.

To figure out the recipe for seal success, Jay and his team tag the newborn seals.

She's wearing a pair on each of her hind flippers.

And this allows them to track the seals through their lives.

Which years did she have pups or not have pups?

And try to figure out, why are some years better for making babies than others?

In the last 50 years, they've followed over 25,000 seals.

And that has allowed them to learn a lot about this population.

They kind of flop along their belly to move around.

But when you see them in the water, swimming, they become these athletes.

And you realize, yeah, they have this very dual existence.

These seals spend a lot of their lives in the water.

Here they fight for territory, look for food, and apparently, sing.

I have to say, they make some amazing sounds.

It's almost like they're singing these bird songs in their water.

Turns out, they can be pretty chatty up on the ice, too.

Here in Antarctica, seals don't have predators on the ice.

Unlike most big mammals, you can get surprisingly close to them in their natural habitat.

And because of that, you can capture some deeply intimate moments.

That said, I come across one moment that stands out above all the rest.

So we're watching this really incredible moment happen.

The mom is trying to convince the pup that it's time to learn how to swim.

Earlier, we were talking about things mothers do with milk.

One of the other things they do is some mothers go in that water and seem to just sit there and call to the pups and won't come out and nurse them until the pups come in, is what it looks like.

And so we're wondering if some mothers make their pups swim, so to speak.

Some pups hardly ever swim, like ever, in 30 days.

And you think, well, that's kind of part of being a seal.

This pup couldn't build up the courage to take its first plunge.

Other pups start swimming maybe as early as a week old and are in for hours and hours a day.

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How Antarctica’s Cutest Baby Seals Grow Up I Antarctic Extremes

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