Stressful times

Sattler R, Bishop AM, Polasek L. 2020. Cortisol Levels for Pregnant and Non-Pregnant Steller Sea Lions (Eumetopias jubatus) in Human Care. Aquatic Mammals, 46: 146-151. Open Access Feeling stressed? Repeating the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy advice “Don’t Panic” to yourself? You’re not alone…in more ways than you may know! All animals experience ‘stress’. We’ve […]

Feeling Hormonal

A few months ago, we shared an initial update about our project funded by SeaWorld Busch Gardens Conservation Fund looking into Steller sea lion pregnancy hormones. In that blog (read it here), we showed the multi-step process of taking a donated fecal sample and preparing it for hormone quantification. In short, this process involved removing […]

Just Relax and Breathe Normally

Pregnancy in any species is often a critical, energetically demanding time. Females require adequate quantity and quality food intake to support their developing offspring. The Steller sea lion, the largest of the otariids, is no exception. In this species, females nurse their offspring for approximately 1 year, meaning at any given time outside of the […]

Is she eating for two?

This nutshell is about based on a recently published paper about developing methods to detect pregnancy in Steller sea lions.

Growing Up Fast

If you have visited the Alaska SeaLife Center (ASLC) in the past few years, you may have seen young Steller sea lion pups swimming and playing from our underwater viewing area. We are working with these animals to construct a morphometric age determination model for sea lions 1 – 48 months old.