Saturday 19 May 2012

Elephant Seals Seen Traveling Oceans for Food


Elephant seals travel through the entire northeast Pacific Ocean on foraging trips in search of prey, newly released tracking data shows.

These findings highlight the adaptability of elephant seals, suggesting that they may be able to withstand environmental perturbations such as climate change because the population is not dependent on a single foraging strategy.

The study, published yesterday, May 15, in the journal PLoS ONE, is one of the largest datasets on the species, including nearly 300 animals, revealing their migrations and diving behavior in unprecedented detail.

The researchers found that individual seals pursue a variety of different foraging strategies, but most of them target one oceanographic feature in particular — a boundary zone between two large rotating ocean currents, or gyres.

No comments:

Post a Comment

You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!

Related Posts with Thumbnails

ShareThis