Scientists hooked up cameras and sensors to small items of neoprene that they glued to the ocean lions’ backs.Credit score: Nathan Angelakis
Footage captured by sea lions sporting light-weight video cameras is giving researchers a glimpse of beforehand unexplored areas of the ocean ground off the south coast of Australia.
The findings, printed on 7 August in Frontiers in Marine Science1, embrace detailed maps of the ocean ground created by combining movies captured by the animals with a machine-learning mannequin. The digicam footage additionally reveals particulars of how completely different habitats and species are distributed.
“These are significantly deep and distant offshore habitats that you may’t get to by standard surveys that you’d conduct from a ship,” says co-author Nathan Angelakis, who researches ecology and evolutionary biology on the South Australian Analysis and Improvement Institute in West Seashore. “With the information we’re amassing, we’re basically exploring new elements of the ocean that haven’t been mapped”.
Uncharted waters
Understanding the structure of the ocean ground is vital for a number of causes, together with marine conservation, navigation and predicting hazards reminiscent of tsunamis. “You’ll be able to’t handle what you haven’t measured,” says Steve Corridor, head of partnerships on the ocean-mapping group Seabed2030, which is predicated in Liverpool, UK.
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Worldwide, simply 26% of the ocean mattress has been mapped at excessive decision. That is partly as a result of challenges related to exploring the deep sea, the place stress is extraordinarily excessive and light-weight ranges are low. Researchers usually map the ocean mattress utilizing remote-operated underwater automobiles or by dropping cameras from floor vessels — however each of those strategies are time-consuming and dear.
Angelakis and his colleagues trialled a relatively low-tech method by enlisting the assistance of untamed Australian sea lions (Neophoca cinerea). These animals spend most of their time on the ocean mattress, foraging for meals throughout the continental shelf, the part of the ocean that extends from the shoreline. The researchers theorized that by monitoring the ocean lions’ actions, they might have the ability to collect details about each the form of the ocean ground and the distribution of various habitats.
The authors hooked up sensors to neoprene patches that they glued to the backs of eight grownup females from two of the most important Australian sea-lion colonies. The tools, which included GPS trackers, cameras and movement sensors, was designed to be small and non-cumbersome, weighing lower than 1% of the ocean lions’ physique weight, in order to not hinder the animals or have an effect on their behaviour. On completion of the venture, crew members had been in a position to take away the sensors from the patches with out damaging the ocean lions’ fur.
Collectively, the ocean lions captured 89 hours of footage that took in six distinct sea-floor habitats, from naked sand to meadows of algae.
The researchers used the footage to evaluate biodiversity in these areas, and to match the areas visited by the 2 colonies. In addition they used the movies to verify the accuracy of a machine-learning mannequin designed to foretell the sea-floor habitat from variables reminiscent of sea-surface temperature and distance from the coast. This revealed that the mannequin was greater than 98% correct, so the researchers then used it to map sea-floor habitats in surrounding areas. “One of many actual powers of the examine is taking the information we collected to foretell different unknown areas,” says Angelakis.
The crew additionally needs to make use of the sensor information to discover how elements reminiscent of depth and nutrient provide have an effect on habitat distribution and biodiversity on the ocean ground. This might assist researchers to additional discover “the ecological worth of various habitats and marine areas to sea lions”, says Angelakis, which might increase conservation efforts.
Utilizing sea-lion-mounted sensors is a “very good approach of getting high-resolution information from a hard-to-get-at place”, says Corridor. He means that in future research the researchers might equip the ocean lions with further sensors to assemble information on the bodily and chemical properties of sea-bed habitats.
