GRL - Scientists Use Deep Data Dive (Seals Wearing Sensors) To Track Antarctic Ice Melt
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The idea is that this Circumpolar Deep Water has been sneaking up onto the continental shelves that surround Antarctica and lapping at the bases of marine glaciers, melting them from below. From a scientific perspective, what we’re talking about is one of the hardest phenomena to observe on the Earth. You have to somehow be in Antarctica; you have to be able to cross a vast field of sea ice; and then, you have to be able to travel hundreds of meters under the freezing ocean surface to boot. This is, needless to say, not a task very well suited for humans — not even even when they have extremely expensive ocean vessels equipped with subsea robots.
A new study in Geophysical Research Letters, though, documents a new and ingenious way of solving this problem using marine mammals that dive to the relevant depths, and, in effect, turning them into scientists by proxy.
To study the behavior of Antarctic waters, the research team, led by PhD student Xiyue Zhang of Caltech, turned to something called MEOP — Marine Mammals Exploring the Oceans Pole to Pole. The program has installed non-invasive or scientific instruments, called tags, on southern elephant seals — the world’s largest pinnipeds — and other marine mammals in both the Arctic and Antarctic. And the result is 300,000 measurements of key ocean variables, and scores of scientific publications.
The program is part of a much broader trend toward using animals on land and at sea as monitors of the environment — a trend that has been enabled by technological advances that have led to sensor technologies that are so small as not to be invasive. “New technology has brought the study of animal movement into the realm of big data, and exponential increases in data volumes are expected to continue in the coming decade,” wrote one researcher in the journal Science last year, when the outlet published twin articles devoted to the subject of using animals as observing systems.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/06/08/seals-wearing-little-sensors-are-showing-scientists-why-antarctica-is-melting/
