Seals are helping scientists to study the environmental situation of the most inaccessible polar areas in the world through a technology developed at St. Andrews University in Scotland. The information that the tagged seals are able to gather is transmitted or "tweeted" to scientists in a portal where further research and review can be facilitated.
The scientists at the Sea Mammal Research Unit of the university developed sensors that can be put on seals to enable experts worldwide to obtain data regarding the status of the most inaccessible parts of the oceans. The devices are said to be noninvasive and slump off when the seals begin to molt. The developers said that the sensors can be uniquely attached to animals. The seals first donned the sensors in 2004, and after a decade, the team of seals was able to generate approximately 400,000 profiles pertaining to the conditions of the Southern Ocean.
The data captured by the sensors is sent to the Marine Mammals Exploring the Oceans Pole-to-Pole, or MEOP portal via satellite in bits and pieces.
"The information sent back to us gives us details about the seal's immediate physical environment," Dr. Lars Boehme from the Scottish Ocean Institute of the university says. "It's like tweeting."
The university processes the information before it is shared to a group of scientists all around the world for review and climate forecasting.
The British Antarctic Survey and other international researchers used the data collated in the portal for their individual investigations before it becomes accessible for other experts on Monday, June 1, 2015.
"The new portal will make available all the data collected by animals up to now to the wider international scientific community and will import future animal platform data as well," Boehme says. "This development is particularly timely as an increasing number of studies now focus on the importance of data from these remote and inaccessible parts of the sea."
The involvement of the animals in the entire process is an interesting progress in the field of ocean studies, says Mike Feda, a biology professor from the university. "But perhaps of more general importance is that data from these remote and inaccessible places now gives us a much clearer picture of the state of the world's oceans," he adds. "We have shown that data from these far-flung locations is critical to understanding the broader state of the global ocean."
Photo: David Stanley | Flickr
