seal | Southern Fried Science

Bot meets Whale: making friends in the ocean; or how I learned to stop worrying and mitigate harmful interactions between recreational ROVs and marine mammals.

Posted on August 21 by Andrew David Thaler

An example of a microROV system. From Thaler et al. (2019)

Today, there are more robots exploring the ocean than ever before. From autonomous ocean-crossing gliders to massive industrial remotely operated vehicles to new tools for science and exploration that open new windows into the abyss, underwater robots are giving people a change to experience the ocean like never before. The fastest growing sector of this new robotic frontier? Small, recreational, observation class ROVs.

Remembering Walter Munk, a photo on a flash drive in a pile of poo from a seal at the bottom of the sea, lucky vikings, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: February 11, 2019

Posted on February 11, 2019 by Andrew David Thaler

Foghorn (A Call to Action!)

Walter Munk, World-Renowned Oceanographer and Revered Scientist has died.

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

So many mesmerizing videos from Deep Sea News! Experience the Life of the Deep Gulf of Mexico in 20 Videos.
This is a staggeringly beautiful image: One Great Shot: The Guillemot and the Iceberg.

Carsten Egevang goes looking for seals in Greenland and finds a photogenic guillemot instead.

Did you lose a flash drive? NIWA might have it. They were defrosting leopard seal poo…you won’t believe what happened next!

This photo of a sealion on a Southland beach was found on a USB stick swallowed by a leopard seal. Credit: unknown

Agents of seal: stealthy seals use subsurface structures to sneak by sharks

Posted on November 18, 2014 by Michelle Jewell

Michelle Jewell is a Zoologist specialized in predator/prey behaivour and the Scientific Communicator for EDNA Interactive. She has spent the past 4 years studying the behaviour of white sharks and Cape fur seals at Geyser Rock, ‘Shark Alley’, South Africa.

Predators are highly influential in ecosystems because of the many top-down effects they can have. The most obvious and direct way predators influence an ecosystem is by eating and reducing the number of prey animals in the system, but another equally important way is the indirect influence they have on the behaviour of prey animals.

If you have avoided parking on a risky-looking street, taken a different route between classes to avoid a bully, or abandoned a forest hike because of snapping twigs in the distance, you have been indirectly affected by perceived ‘predators’. In the wild, prey animals will also change their behaviour when they perceive that predators are around, and these altered behaviours often influence other species, ultimately shaping the ecosystem.