PacMam Intern

For my Summer internship, I assisted PacMam (Pacific Mammal Research) in Anacortes, WA and remotely. PacMam is a 501c3 non-profit organization that is dedicated to better understanding more about marine mammal populations in the Salish Sea. During my time interning for PacMam, the main marine mammals that they were focusing on were harbor seals and porpoises. The work that I conducted for PacMam was primarily in assisting with harbor seal identifications where I identified new seals, even naming a few, but also reidentified seals that had already been confirmed and added to the Seal Codex. With harbor seal research, there are few studies about in-water behavior and site fidelity. Most of the work that is done with harbor seals that are on land. To counteract this, PacMam has been conducting a long-term behavioral and photo-ID study of harbor seals in Burrows Pass, Anacortes for the last 10 years, exploring in-water fidelity rates, seasonal presence, and behavior. Over the period from January 2015 - November 2019, they found that on average, there were 161-286 seals present every season, with summer having the lowest rates (Edison et al. 2024).