southern elephant seals
2 stories filed under southern elephant seals on World Data Ocean. The newest of them: “Elephant seals unlock hidden cetacean acoustic data across the Southern Ocean” and “Satellite Imagery Reveals South Georgia's Elephant Seal Population Assessment”. Elephant seals drifting silently through the Southern Ocean are doing more than foraging, they are listening. Satellite imagery has delivered the first comprehensive count of South Georgia's elephant seals in nearly three decades, and the numbers carry weight. A Global Hub for Ocean Intelligence 4 World Data Ocean is a centralized digital platform where researchers, scientists, and ocean enthusiasts converge to… The list below is every southern elephant seals story on World Data Ocean, newest first.
Elephant seals unlock hidden cetacean acoustic data across the Southern Ocean
Elephant seals drifting silently through the Southern Ocean are doing more than foraging, they are listening. Between 2017 and 2020, nine female seals equipped with digital acoustic tags captured cetacean vocalizations across vast, remote stretches of the Southern Ocean during their spring migration. The results are compelling: Antarctic blue whales near the polar front, humpbacks in subantarctic waters, and sperm whales along key bathymetric gradients. This is ocean intelligence at its most innovative, biologged animals as acoustic surveyors in places we cannot easily reach.
Satellite Imagery Reveals South Georgia's Elephant Seal Population Assessment
Satellite imagery has delivered the first comprehensive count of South Georgia's elephant seals in nearly three decades, and the numbers carry weight. We estimate 107,630 breeding females, down from 113,444 in 1995, but the authors rightly caution against reading this as stability. The census followed highly pathogenic avian influenza through the region, so this is a perturbed population, not a baseline. It is a reminder that remote, challenging sites need innovative tools.