Researchers working in Antarctica kept running into the same problem: the continental ice shelves, nearly impossible to navigate by boat.
That’s why oceanographers have turned to a more agile data collection process -- seals, wearing sensors on their heads.
The ice shelves of Antarctica are an extremely diverse environment thanks to the large amounts of nutrients generated by the interactions between ocean, land and ice shelf, according to a release.
In order to study the biodiversity closer, researchers have been using oceanographic data logging equipment on animals to get readings on conductivity, temperature and depth of the ocean.
The study about animal-born investigation techniques and their preliminary findings was published in October in the journal Limnology and Oceanography.
Previous studies using instruments strapped to migrating southern elephant seals and resident Weddell seals—a deep diving predator—“had shown some interesting physical processes in Antarctic areas,” said lead study author Nobuo Kokubun, an assistant professor with Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research. “But even here, there has barely been anything investigating coastal areas covered by landfast ice.”
In order to record their data, the researchers attached satellite relay equipment with glue to the heads of eight Weddell seals, from March to September 2017, and were able to determine new aspects of the Antarctic ocean’s seasonal changes and the seal’s hunting habits.
Researchers hope to continue their use of seals to explore and log data about the Antarctic coastal marine ecosystem.
