  Dynamics of skyrmionic spin texture in the spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate is
examined by analytical and numerical means. We show the skyrmion (coreless
vortex) to be inherently unstable in the sense that the state initially
prepared purely within the antiferromagnetic (ferromagnetic) order parameter
manifold inevitably evolves into a mixture of both. The vorticity-dependent
drift in the presence of the trapping potential also contributes to the
disintegration of the initial spin texture manifold. We argue that the notion
of a skyrmion as a topologically protected entity becomes ill defined during
the dynamical evolution process.
