Studying the ocean is a intimidating job. It needs devices that wear’t corrode in the seawater, and are able to endure the intensifying, squashing pressures as they dive down. While robotics have endupbeing muchbetter at enduring these difficult environments consideringthat they endedupbeing part of the team embarking on deep-sea expeditions, animals like elephant seals and weddell seals do it naturally with ease. As a workaround to keep the tech costs low however the science quality high, a group of scientists had the concept to connect trackers and fundamental measurement tools identifying temperaturelevel, salinity, and depth to these seals to discover more about their huge marine environment.
The tracker looks like a amusing little hat, however puton’t let its look fool you. It has tested to be favorable to severe science.
Earlier this summerseason, the group of worldwide researchers working on the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (ACEAS) task released a report in the journal Communications Earth and Environment in which the seal scubadivers using these satellite-paired, glued-on trackers exposed that the bottom of the sea in some locations is muchdeeper than what’s specified on existing maps. The seals likewise assisted discover a concealed undersea canyon in Antarctica’s seas that was then verified with other tools, Scientific American justrecently reported.
This is the face of an oceanographer that maps the #Antarctic continental rack. Seals with sensingunits are rewording previous approximates of the ocean depths. In the most severe case “they were diving 1,000m deeper than what we idea was the ocean flooring.”
➡️https://t.co/eOjhiR3Dtu pic.twitter.com/6xlBZITGNx— Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (@Ant_Partnership) August 8, 2023
This researchstudy is simply one of the numerous organized jobs for these blubbery, flippered researchstudy assistants. According to ABC Australia, the tracker-adorning seals are part of a 20-year task to comprehend the grooves and depths of the East Antarctic continental rack and the seafloor listedbelow it. Turning the seals into reliable free-roaming sensingunits can fill in spaces in information associated to some of the most hard-to-get-to parts of the Antarctic ocean, as the seals are “tweeting” little packages of info they’ve gathered to a satel