On the way to Antarctica, we had a few talks about the different animals and birds we would see.  When talking about seals they talked about the period of time when the seals do catastrophic molting.  What?  That’s even a phrase, catastrophic molting?  We didn’t see any seals that were doing catastrophic molting.  I didn’t see very many seals that looked like anything other than large rocks.  Apparently penguins also do catastrophic molting also.  We didn’t see any of those either.  So, I did a google search on catastrophic molting and here is what I learned: https://sites.google.com/site/elephantsealnotes/events-on-land/molting