Aug. 12, 2024
Conservation through Animal Collaboration: Sea Lions Mapping Benthic Areas
On this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, we explore the innovative use of sea lions to map benthic habitats in Australian waters. Traditional methods of mapping underwater areas can be costly and challenging, but leveraging animals...
On this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, we explore the innovative use of sea lions to map benthic habitats in Australian waters. Traditional methods of mapping underwater areas can be costly and challenging, but leveraging animals like sea lions offers a unique solution. Join host Andrew Lewin as we delve into the importance of mapping the ocean to better protect marine habitats and species. Tune in to learn more about this fascinating approach to ocean conservation!
Link to article: https://phys.org/news/2024-08-scientists-equip-australian-sea-lions.html
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Using animals, such as sea lions, to map benthic habitats can be an effective and cost-efficient method for conservation and exploration. In a podcast episode, researchers in Australia discussed their successful use of camera tags on endangered sea lions to map benthic habitats in Southern Australia. By equipping the sea lions with small, lightweight cameras, researchers were able to track their movements and visually document the diverse benthic habitats they encountered.
The data obtained from the animal-borne video and movement data provided critical information for mapping previously unmapped benthic habitats on the continental shelf. This method allowed researchers to cover over 5,000 square kilometers of seabed, offering valuable insights into the habitats used by the sea lions. The resulting videos from the camera tags enabled researchers to identify various benthic habitats, including macroalgae reef, macroalgae meadow, bare sand, sponge and sand habitats, invertebrate reefs, and invertebrate boulders.
By leveraging the natural movements of these sea lions, researchers were able to gather data on a large scale without the need for expensive equipment like remotely operated vehicles or drones. This approach not only helped in mapping critical habitats for the endangered Australian sea lions but also had broader implications for surveying other marine species of interest. The cost-effectiveness and efficiency of using animals for mapping benthic habitats highlight the potential for this method to be a valuable tool in conservation and exploration efforts.
The successful use of sea lions to map benthic habitats demonstrates an innovative and sustainable approach to gathering crucial data for conservation purposes. This method not only benefits the protection of endangered species but also contributes to a better understanding of marine ecosystems and habitats, paving the way for more effective conservation strategies in the future.
Camera tags on animals, such as sea lions, have proven to be invaluable tools in gathering data on habitat use and movement patterns. In the podcast episode, researchers in Australia utilized camera tags on endangered sea lions to map benthic habitats in Southern Australia. By equipping the sea lions with small, lightweight cameras, researchers were able to track their movements and visually observe the different habitats they encountered. This innovative approach allowed for the mapping of over 5,000 square kilometers of seabed, providing critical information for the protection of the endangered Australian sea lions.
The use of camera tags on animals not only aids in the conservation of specific species but also contributes to broader marine conservation efforts. By studying the habitat use and movement patterns of marine mammals like sea lions, researchers can gain insights into the diversity and distribution of benthic habitats. This information is essential for effective marine conservation planning, as it helps identify critical habitats for protection and informs management strategies for endangered species.
The success of using camera tags on sea lions highlights the potential of this technology in advancing marine conservation efforts. By leveraging the natural movements of animals to gather data on underwater habitats, researchers can overcome the challenges associated with traditional mapping methods, such as the high cost of remotely operated vehicles and limited coverage of survey areas. The ability to visually observe and document habitat use through animal-borne cameras opens up new possibilities for studying and protecting marine ecosystems.
Overall, the use of camera tags on animals like sea lions represents a promising approach to conservation biology. By harnessing the power of animal movements to collect data on benthic habitats, researchers can enhance their understanding of marine environments and contribute to the preservation of endangered species and marine biodiversity.
Proper protocols and care must be followed when using camera tags on animals to ensure their safety and well-being during the research process. In the podcast episode, researchers equipped eight endangered Australian sea lions with small, lightweight cameras to track their movements and map benthic habitats. The cameras and tracking instruments were carefully attached to the sea lions using small pieces of neoprene glued onto their fur, weighing less than one percent of the sea lion's body weight to prevent any negative effects on their swimming abilities.
Furthermore, the researchers took precautions to ensure the camera tags did not hinder the sea lions' movements or cause any harm. They monitored the animals closely and recorded over 89 hours of footage over two to three days. Additionally, the researchers sedated the sea lions when retrieving the cameras to prevent any stress or harm to the animals during the process.
This approach demonstrates the importance of following proper protocols and care when using camera tags on animals for research purposes. By prioritizing the safety and well-being of the animals, researchers can gather valuable data while minimizing any potential negative impacts on the study subjects. This ethical and responsible approach is essential in wildlife research to ensure the welfare of the animals involved and maintain the integrity of the research findings.
Transcript
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One of the big challenges when we try to find out information below
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sea level is to be able to see everything. It's really difficult to
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map areas that are important benthic areas like
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bottom areas like the seabed to find out which habitat is
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best to protect endangered species or to
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house really diverse areas. It's really difficult to find those
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out and a lot of times it's expensive to pay for remotely
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operated vehicles or deep sea submarines to be able to go
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out or even scuba divers to be able to go out and map the areas. Sometimes
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you're limited by area, you're limited by people
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power. It's very difficult. But here's an idea.
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What if you use animals to map those areas? That's what
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we're gonna talk about on today's episode because a new study has revealed sea
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lions have been used to map benthic habitats in Australian
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waters. We're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the
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Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey
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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with
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the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean
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by taking action. And on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about
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something that I have always been interested in, and that's mapping the
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ocean. Finding out as much information about the ocean so you can do more analysis
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and be able to protect the ocean better. It's how to protect the ocean. I
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wonder where we got that idea from. Anyway, just to give you
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a little background, growing up as a marine biologist after
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my undergrad and doing my master's, when I did my master's, I was introduced
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to a technology called geographic information systems. It's
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also known as GIS. If you don't know what that is, it's essentially
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a way to house information in a database with
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a GPS, basically a location. And so a lot of
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times when you're in the field and you're trying to map things, you're trying
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to find out things like, where are the coral reefs? Where are
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the seagrass habitats? Where are the mangroves? How far do they reach? How
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far do they go? How deep do they go? And where can
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we find animals that are associated with that? And can we map and predict
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where these habitats will be based on specific
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environmental conditions and sort of topography, like
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geography and geology and all that wonderful stuff? And so I
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learned that in my master's. In fact, normally when you do a research master's,
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I remember you do two to maybe three years
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at a school where you just do some field work, you run some
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analyses, you learn some new techniques, you get to interact
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and network with a number of different professors, people
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on your committee, you have to do testing, then you have to defend, and
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it's a big whole ordeal. Mine was a little bit different. I didn't do my full
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two to three years At my university, at Acadia University, at
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my graduate university, I actually did one year at the Nova
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Scotia Community College to learn about GIS. I
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was in their geomatics department and I learned about GIS and
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remote sensing. And when I learned about that, I was really interested
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in learning about how to use these technologies to
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map you know, benthic habitats, essentially the seafloor,
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you know, no matter how deep it is, how do we measure that? How do we find out
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what's there, especially when it comes to fish in
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macroinvertebrates like crab, shrimp, that was macroinvertebrates,
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really my master's thesis. That's what I looked at. And I looked at you
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know, what different assemblages were there, what different communities of
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macroinvertebrates were there along the Scotian Shelf, Nova Scotian Shelf
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and Bay of Fundy, and did they repeat, did they, did they typify an
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area? Were they all found in one specific area? There were four to five
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areas that were found over four years consistently, and
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how would that play a role in marine protected areas? But I
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digress, that was my master's thesis, if you ever want to talk to me about that, I'd
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be more than happy to go over that, that was almost actually it
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was 20 years ago this year crazy how long ago that was
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but I digress I did my year at the Nova Scotia Community College
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in their geomatics department in their geomatics school and then I did
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a year at my master's university at
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Acadia University and I was able to defend successfully that
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master's so I came out and I had a GIS background and
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I started to start you know explore what that meant
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and how I can use that for a lot of different analysis from creating maps
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to looking at spatial analyses of communities. It was a lot of
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fun. And that continued to persist as the technology got
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better. We started to get remotely operated vehicles and
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we started to get data from that. But the problem with those remotely operated vehicles
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is they were super expensive. You know, we even had not only underwater,
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but we had above water. We had LIDAR, which was just like a
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new technology back then, which was even more expensive
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to use. But it gave you like the benthic, like the depths of
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things underwater at a certain depth. It
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was pretty shallow, but you got to see the shoreline quite a bit. You
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got to be able to make predictions of what those areas would be based
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on depth, based on what's found there before. But it was really cumbersome. It
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was expensive. You had to have a lot of people on the ground to
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be able to ground through certain areas. It was a difficult process.
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It wasn't easy. And the ROVs, like using them was
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a lot of fun and you'd go to school for that and you can do that. I've never
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actually operated one, but I saw them being operated. I see people
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get this type of benthic data, but they were in very small areas and it was very
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difficult to cover a large area because it was so expensive. I
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don't know how expensive they are now, but I'm sure they're still more expensive than
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we would like. So it was difficult. Even
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though you had the technology to do it, now you have drones and you have
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specific satellites that can go in
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centimeters resolution. So you may be able to tell different coral
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reefs apart. You'd be able to tell some coral reefs from
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seagrass areas, from mangroves, and all this different stuff. It's
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a heavy burden to take. You have to be very
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technical. You have to know a lot about wavelengths and different
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narrowed resolutions and all this wonderful stuff, when satellites are
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going to pass, how to get rid of cloud cover. If you can't get
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rid of cloud cover, it's a lot. It's a lot of math. It's
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a whole field in itself. But
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when you want to use it for conservation, you want to be able to use it so
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it's effective in your decision making. And so some
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researchers did a study in Australia where
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they decided to say, hey, you know what would be a really good idea?
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is if we used animals for this type of stuff. Now,
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I want to talk, just before I go into the animals, I want to just talk a
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little bit about tagging. Tagging has been a really
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important technology, having satellite tags and
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small pit tags to be able to tell the distribution of
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a population of a species. So in other words, where do they go, how
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far, how long, sometimes how deep. you
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know, what's the temperature salinity depending on what's associated with the
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tag and you're able to be able to like see where
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they go in terms of a location. Like they'd have a satellite GPS
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or they'd have a PIT tag GPS where they pass these receivers and they'd be
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able to tell where they are and when they passed and what individual and
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all that kind of stuff. And that was great. That was awesome. But
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now we have something different. We have tags, but they're called
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camera tags. And camera tags allow us, the technology
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is that good where it allows us to mount a camera on
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an animal, whether it be a shark, a whale, any
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kind of marine mammal. And you get to see where they go. In
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fact, there's been some pretty interesting discoveries. Over
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at Beneath the Waves, Dr. Austin Gallagher and his crew were
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able to find out where one of the largest, I
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guess you'd call it patches, but habitats of seagrass are
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in the Bahamas and potentially in the world. and
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they were able to discover that by putting a camera tag on a tiger shark,
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an animal that they study regularly, and being able to see where it
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goes and how it goes. You may not have seen that if
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you just looked at a GPS, if it was just a regular tag without a camera, but
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now that you see a camera, you get to see visually, you get to
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see the bottom. Right, you're not making predictions, you're not diving on,
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you can see the bottom from the perspective of the back of
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a tiger shark. Well, a group of researchers in Australia
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decided to do that, but they're going to like, hey, you know what, there's this endangered sea
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lion that we really want to protect. Let's find out where it goes. And while we're doing that,
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let's map the habitats of where it goes by putting a camera tag on it. Wow.
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If you said that to me 20 years ago, I'd be like, that's crazy, you're gonna lose the tag, if
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that even exists, like tags were just new back then. I'd be like, there's no way
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that that's gonna work, no way. Well, it worked. Not only
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did it work, but it worked really well. They tagged eight endangered sea
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lions, and it kind
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of unraveled the mystery of some of the bottom areas that
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they were able to go into and that they were able to find some
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of the areas that they were finding and map about 5,000 square kilometers of
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seabed in Southern Australia. Now, that
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is something that is pretty cool. And
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they were able to get critical information that provided management
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to protect an endangered species, but could also be used
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to survey other marine species of interest. endangered
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Australian sea lions, so Neofoca cinerea, that's
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the Latin name, I'm not trying to swear on this, to carry cameras.
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So the resulting videos allowed researchers to identify previously unmapped
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benthic habitats used by the sea lions on the
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continental shelf. They published their results in Frontiers in Marine Science.
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So using animal-borne video, this is a quote, using
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animal-borne video and movement data from a benthic predator is
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a really effective way of mapping diverse benthic habitats across large
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areas of the seabed, said the first author, Nathan Angelakis, Angelakis,
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Angelakis? I'm not sure how to pronounce that. A PhD student at the University
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of Adelaide and the Southern Australian Research and
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Development Institute of Aquatic Sciences. So these data are
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useful both for mapping critical habitats for an endangered species, such
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as the Australian sea lion, and more broadly for mapping unexplored
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areas around the seabed. Now think about this. You don't know
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where this animal goes. You put this camera tag on the animal.
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You don't know where it's going to go. But you also want
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to know where it's going to go, and you know it's going to be a mystery, so you're tracking these
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animals. Not only are you tracking these animals, but visually you're able to
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see what habitats these animals go. Right,
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so for the project, eight adult female Australian sea lions
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from Olive Island and Seabay colonies were
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equipped with small lightweight cameras. So it's so light
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that they didn't want to affect the drag of the swimming, so they made it really,
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really light. The cameras and tracking instruments were glued to small pieces of
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neoprene that were then glued onto the fur of the sea lions, which
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doesn't harm the sea lions so in total the filming and tracking
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equipment weigh less than one percent of the lion's body weight the sea
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lion's body weight to prevent dragging effects and allow the animals to
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move without restrictions recordings were made over two to three days
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and they had over 89 hours of recordings it
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was actually quite amazing now
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what they're able to do is they're able to look at the video footage of
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89 hours and go through and say hey let's look at where
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this these animals went so they had eight animals went in all different
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directions and what they're out there doing is they're out there trying to
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get food for their newborns at their colonies so they're going
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around and trying to find food they're going all different places so they're going you
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know they all went to different a lot of them went to different habitats and
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they saw the different habitats that were around and because it had a gps
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on it they were able to tell where they were at any point i believe at any point
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in time or it's maybe it's just when they come back up to the surface i'm
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not too sure about that But it allowed them to move
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across benthic habitats across more than 5,000 square kilometers of
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continental shelf. And they're able to see what these animals were
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seeing as they went through. So that's always great
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to see. And so I just wanted to go over in
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this article that I'm searching for as we go. They went through a number
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of different habitats, six benthic habitats, macroalgae reef,
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macroalgae meadow, bear sand, sponge and
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sand habitats, invertebrate reefs and invertebrate boulders.
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So these are the different types of you know categories of
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benthic habitats that are in that area and they got to see all
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of it and they were able to make predictions based on these areas. They
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they sort of were very conservative and they only went to a small area but
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based on what they saw and how far out they saw they can make
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those calculations of look this isn't where you know the
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sponge sand area is and this is how big it is and
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this is invertebrate reefs and this is invertebrate boulder and then they can go out
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and ground truth it after to see hey how far off
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are we on this you know is this where the the actual location is
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how big is it were we close in our predictions of the size and probably that
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will be able that algorithm will be able to change over time but
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being able to see these differences in benthic
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habitats and how these marine mammals go and marine mammals are perfect for
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this and like animals like sharks are perfect because they're migratory species like
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they move over large areas they may not be fully migratory they
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may stay in one specific area but they move they move over a number
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of different habitats they're not like a crab that might stay in one
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habitat once it reaches adulthood and never really move through
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across like different habitats because that's the habitat it wants to stay in But
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when you have a sea lion, for instance, an
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Australian sea lion, you can find out where it goes. And now once you've
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got the mapping done, this is where the conservation begins, you
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can see the areas that are used by these eight sea
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lions. And then you're probably going to do more studies to find out where maybe
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another eight sea lions go, or maybe even more, maybe even less.
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You're going to see where those tags go. You're going to see what they
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see. You're going to be able to find out how diverse
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these habitats are, how small, how big. Are there areas where there's
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some that are bigger than others? Are there some that are like a lot of
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gradient habitats? We're going to see all of that
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in due time. But you get to do it without paying the expensive
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bill for a remotely operated vehicle, or a boat that
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you have to use a remotely operated vehicle on, or even a drone
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to be able to, if you can see these habitats, depending on how deep they are, you
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know, to take a boat that you have to take when you're over the water because
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for a drone, because you have to be near the remote control or
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near the drone when you're flying. So you can't, there's only a certain range you can fly
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off the coast. You have to have a boat. Boats are really expensive. Gas is
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really expensive and not every organization or
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researcher can afford that. It's not, very little can afford that, especially
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the boats that would be required to operate like a remotely operated vehicle. So
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it's kind of fun to see ecologists
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and conservationists to use an animal to say, hey, buddy, where
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do you go? Let me know where you go, and I'm going to try and protect that.
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So let's work together on this. And essentially, these sea lions are
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protecting themselves, which is great to see. That's what we want
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to see in the future. That's how we always want to see it. And so I
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feel like that's where we need to go. and use these
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types of techniques as long as they're safe for the animals, but
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you want to find out where these animals are going, especially animals that will
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cross a number of different habitats, this could be an important precedent
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to set and look for conservation and exploration
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of different habitats when you have these types of tags. Now, it's not
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going to be easy. There could be a lot of problems with tags. The
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glue may not hold. It may pop off a little earlier. Obviously, you
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don't want to harm the animal in any shape or form, so you have to follow specific
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protocols. Those change all the time, so making sure you stay up to
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date on those protocols. But the real frustration is if the camera
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doesn't work when you get down there, or maybe it gets scratched, or
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maybe the sea lion hits up against a
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rock, and that goes flying, or you lose it. you know there's a lot
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of it's not an easy thing to do it's not you just stick on the back and wait for
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the animal to come back and then you you do it and that's how they got the the tags by
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the way is they'd wait till the animals came back the mothers came back to
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feed their young and they would grab the the cameras off of them they would probably
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sedate them There's a picture on here, there's actually a video on here about
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where they go, it's really cool, I highly recommend you look at the link that
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I'm going to put in the show notes. But they also have to
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sedate the animal because it's going to protect itself, it doesn't know what you're
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trying to do, it doesn't know you're trying to help it, and so you have to sedate
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the animal, take that off, and so that's a process, and that's going to take a
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little time, and to make sure you map all these habitats using these
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animals takes a lot of time, but you have to remember They are animals and
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they need to be protected and they need to be treated properly and that's what these
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researchers are probably doing, I hope. I pretty much know
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because they have to follow specific protocols when dealing marine mammals and
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permitting and everything and so we're seeing that. We're
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seeing that being taken care of and hopefully, you know, in
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the future that will continue to get better and better and more animals will be
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able to tell us where they go and we can better protect them. So,
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that's it. That's the episode for today. I
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thought it was a fun article to go over. I'm going
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to put, like I said, I'm going to put the link in the show. There's a great video that I'll
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point you to on YouTube and in the article, and you can
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go and take a look at that. That was on fizz.org, a great site
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where I get a lot of my articles that I put on my newsletter. Which
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you can sign up for if you go to speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter
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You get a lot of these stories actually put the story in earlier in
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the week in one of those newsletters But now I'm talking about because I thought it
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was so interesting. I read my own newsletters, too But
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in those newsletters, I send them out Monday to Friday. I put in
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three articles I put in three jobs and I put in the latest podcast episodes
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that have been out on our network on speak up for blue network and And
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yeah, I just like to interact with you guys. So let me know what you think when you sign up,
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what you think of those newsletters. And
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I work hard on them. It takes me about a half hour to an hour
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every day to work on those. So that's five hours a week that I don't
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usually have. So I put them up on LinkedIn as well. So if you want to subscribe to
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my newsletter on LinkedIn, you can do so. But anyway, that's it for today's episode.
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I want to thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the How to
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Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time. And happy
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One of the big challenges when we try to find out information below
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sea level is to be able to see everything. It's really difficult to
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map areas that are important benthic areas like
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bottom areas like the seabed to find out which habitat is
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best to protect endangered species or to
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house really diverse areas. It's really difficult to find those
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out and a lot of times it's expensive to pay for remotely
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operated vehicles or deep sea submarines to be able to go
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out or even scuba divers to be able to go out and map the areas. Sometimes
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you're limited by area, you're limited by people
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power. It's very difficult. But here's an idea.
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What if you use animals to map those areas? That's what
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we're gonna talk about on today's episode because a new study has revealed sea
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lions have been used to map benthic habitats in Australian
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waters. We're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the
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Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey
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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with
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the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean
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by taking action. And on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about
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something that I have always been interested in, and that's mapping the
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ocean. Finding out as much information about the ocean so you can do more analysis
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and be able to protect the ocean better. It's how to protect the ocean. I
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wonder where we got that idea from. Anyway, just to give you
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a little background, growing up as a marine biologist after
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my undergrad and doing my master's, when I did my master's, I was introduced
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to a technology called geographic information systems. It's
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also known as GIS. If you don't know what that is, it's essentially
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a way to house information in a database with
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a GPS, basically a location. And so a lot of
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times when you're in the field and you're trying to map things, you're trying
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to find out things like, where are the coral reefs? Where are
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the seagrass habitats? Where are the mangroves? How far do they reach? How
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far do they go? How deep do they go? And where can
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we find animals that are associated with that? And can we map and predict
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where these habitats will be based on specific
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environmental conditions and sort of topography, like
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geography and geology and all that wonderful stuff? And so I
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learned that in my master's. In fact, normally when you do a research master's,
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I remember you do two to maybe three years
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at a school where you just do some field work, you run some
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analyses, you learn some new techniques, you get to interact
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and network with a number of different professors, people
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on your committee, you have to do testing, then you have to defend, and
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it's a big whole ordeal. Mine was a little bit different. I didn't do my full
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two to three years At my university, at Acadia University, at
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my graduate university, I actually did one year at the Nova
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Scotia Community College to learn about GIS. I
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was in their geomatics department and I learned about GIS and
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remote sensing. And when I learned about that, I was really interested
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in learning about how to use these technologies to
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map you know, benthic habitats, essentially the seafloor,
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you know, no matter how deep it is, how do we measure that? How do we find out
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what's there, especially when it comes to fish in
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macroinvertebrates like crab, shrimp, that was macroinvertebrates,
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really my master's thesis. That's what I looked at. And I looked at you
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know, what different assemblages were there, what different communities of
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macroinvertebrates were there along the Scotian Shelf, Nova Scotian Shelf
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and Bay of Fundy, and did they repeat, did they, did they typify an
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area? Were they all found in one specific area? There were four to five
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areas that were found over four years consistently, and
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how would that play a role in marine protected areas? But I
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digress, that was my master's thesis, if you ever want to talk to me about that, I'd
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be more than happy to go over that, that was almost actually it
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was 20 years ago this year crazy how long ago that was
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but I digress I did my year at the Nova Scotia Community College
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in their geomatics department in their geomatics school and then I did
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a year at my master's university at
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Acadia University and I was able to defend successfully that
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master's so I came out and I had a GIS background and
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I started to start you know explore what that meant
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and how I can use that for a lot of different analysis from creating maps
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to looking at spatial analyses of communities. It was a lot of
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fun. And that continued to persist as the technology got
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better. We started to get remotely operated vehicles and
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we started to get data from that. But the problem with those remotely operated vehicles
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is they were super expensive. You know, we even had not only underwater,
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but we had above water. We had LIDAR, which was just like a
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new technology back then, which was even more expensive
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to use. But it gave you like the benthic, like the depths of
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things underwater at a certain depth. It
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was pretty shallow, but you got to see the shoreline quite a bit. You
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got to be able to make predictions of what those areas would be based
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on depth, based on what's found there before. But it was really cumbersome. It
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was expensive. You had to have a lot of people on the ground to
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be able to ground through certain areas. It was a difficult process.
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It wasn't easy. And the ROVs, like using them was
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a lot of fun and you'd go to school for that and you can do that. I've never
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actually operated one, but I saw them being operated. I see people
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get this type of benthic data, but they were in very small areas and it was very
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difficult to cover a large area because it was so expensive. I
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don't know how expensive they are now, but I'm sure they're still more expensive than
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we would like. So it was difficult. Even
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though you had the technology to do it, now you have drones and you have
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specific satellites that can go in
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centimeters resolution. So you may be able to tell different coral
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reefs apart. You'd be able to tell some coral reefs from
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seagrass areas, from mangroves, and all this different stuff. It's
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a heavy burden to take. You have to be very
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technical. You have to know a lot about wavelengths and different
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narrowed resolutions and all this wonderful stuff, when satellites are
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going to pass, how to get rid of cloud cover. If you can't get
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rid of cloud cover, it's a lot. It's a lot of math. It's
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a whole field in itself. But
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when you want to use it for conservation, you want to be able to use it so
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it's effective in your decision making. And so some
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researchers did a study in Australia where
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they decided to say, hey, you know what would be a really good idea?
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is if we used animals for this type of stuff. Now,
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I want to talk, just before I go into the animals, I want to just talk a
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little bit about tagging. Tagging has been a really
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important technology, having satellite tags and
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small pit tags to be able to tell the distribution of
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a population of a species. So in other words, where do they go, how
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far, how long, sometimes how deep. you
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know, what's the temperature salinity depending on what's associated with the
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tag and you're able to be able to like see where
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they go in terms of a location. Like they'd have a satellite GPS
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or they'd have a PIT tag GPS where they pass these receivers and they'd be
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able to tell where they are and when they passed and what individual and
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all that kind of stuff. And that was great. That was awesome. But
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now we have something different. We have tags, but they're called
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camera tags. And camera tags allow us, the technology
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is that good where it allows us to mount a camera on
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an animal, whether it be a shark, a whale, any
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kind of marine mammal. And you get to see where they go. In
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fact, there's been some pretty interesting discoveries. Over
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at Beneath the Waves, Dr. Austin Gallagher and his crew were
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able to find out where one of the largest, I
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guess you'd call it patches, but habitats of seagrass are
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in the Bahamas and potentially in the world. and
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they were able to discover that by putting a camera tag on a tiger shark,
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an animal that they study regularly, and being able to see where it
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goes and how it goes. You may not have seen that if
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you just looked at a GPS, if it was just a regular tag without a camera, but
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now that you see a camera, you get to see visually, you get to
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see the bottom. Right, you're not making predictions, you're not diving on,
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you can see the bottom from the perspective of the back of
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a tiger shark. Well, a group of researchers in Australia
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decided to do that, but they're going to like, hey, you know what, there's this endangered sea
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lion that we really want to protect. Let's find out where it goes. And while we're doing that,
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let's map the habitats of where it goes by putting a camera tag on it. Wow.
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If you said that to me 20 years ago, I'd be like, that's crazy, you're gonna lose the tag, if
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that even exists, like tags were just new back then. I'd be like, there's no way
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that that's gonna work, no way. Well, it worked. Not only
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did it work, but it worked really well. They tagged eight endangered sea
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lions, and it kind
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of unraveled the mystery of some of the bottom areas that
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they were able to go into and that they were able to find some
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of the areas that they were finding and map about 5,000 square kilometers of
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seabed in Southern Australia. Now, that
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is something that is pretty cool. And
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they were able to get critical information that provided management
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to protect an endangered species, but could also be used
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to survey other marine species of interest. endangered
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Australian sea lions, so Neofoca cinerea, that's
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the Latin name, I'm not trying to swear on this, to carry cameras.
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So the resulting videos allowed researchers to identify previously unmapped
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benthic habitats used by the sea lions on the
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continental shelf. They published their results in Frontiers in Marine Science.
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So using animal-borne video, this is a quote, using
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animal-borne video and movement data from a benthic predator is
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a really effective way of mapping diverse benthic habitats across large
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areas of the seabed, said the first author, Nathan Angelakis, Angelakis,
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Angelakis? I'm not sure how to pronounce that. A PhD student at the University
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of Adelaide and the Southern Australian Research and
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Development Institute of Aquatic Sciences. So these data are
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useful both for mapping critical habitats for an endangered species, such
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as the Australian sea lion, and more broadly for mapping unexplored
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areas around the seabed. Now think about this. You don't know
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where this animal goes. You put this camera tag on the animal.
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You don't know where it's going to go. But you also want
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to know where it's going to go, and you know it's going to be a mystery, so you're tracking these
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animals. Not only are you tracking these animals, but visually you're able to
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see what habitats these animals go. Right,
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so for the project, eight adult female Australian sea lions
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from Olive Island and Seabay colonies were
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equipped with small lightweight cameras. So it's so light
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that they didn't want to affect the drag of the swimming, so they made it really,
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really light. The cameras and tracking instruments were glued to small pieces of
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neoprene that were then glued onto the fur of the sea lions, which
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doesn't harm the sea lions so in total the filming and tracking
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equipment weigh less than one percent of the lion's body weight the sea
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lion's body weight to prevent dragging effects and allow the animals to
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move without restrictions recordings were made over two to three days
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and they had over 89 hours of recordings it
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was actually quite amazing now
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what they're able to do is they're able to look at the video footage of
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89 hours and go through and say hey let's look at where
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this these animals went so they had eight animals went in all different
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directions and what they're out there doing is they're out there trying to
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get food for their newborns at their colonies so they're going
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around and trying to find food they're going all different places so they're going you
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know they all went to different a lot of them went to different habitats and
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they saw the different habitats that were around and because it had a gps
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on it they were able to tell where they were at any point i believe at any point
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in time or it's maybe it's just when they come back up to the surface i'm
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not too sure about that But it allowed them to move
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across benthic habitats across more than 5,000 square kilometers of
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continental shelf. And they're able to see what these animals were
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seeing as they went through. So that's always great
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to see. And so I just wanted to go over in
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this article that I'm searching for as we go. They went through a number
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of different habitats, six benthic habitats, macroalgae reef,
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macroalgae meadow, bear sand, sponge and
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sand habitats, invertebrate reefs and invertebrate boulders.
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So these are the different types of you know categories of
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benthic habitats that are in that area and they got to see all
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of it and they were able to make predictions based on these areas. They
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they sort of were very conservative and they only went to a small area but
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based on what they saw and how far out they saw they can make
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those calculations of look this isn't where you know the
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sponge sand area is and this is how big it is and
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this is invertebrate reefs and this is invertebrate boulder and then they can go out
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and ground truth it after to see hey how far off
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are we on this you know is this where the the actual location is
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how big is it were we close in our predictions of the size and probably that
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will be able that algorithm will be able to change over time but
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being able to see these differences in benthic
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habitats and how these marine mammals go and marine mammals are perfect for
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this and like animals like sharks are perfect because they're migratory species like
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they move over large areas they may not be fully migratory they
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may stay in one specific area but they move they move over a number
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of different habitats they're not like a crab that might stay in one
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habitat once it reaches adulthood and never really move through
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across like different habitats because that's the habitat it wants to stay in But
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when you have a sea lion, for instance, an
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Australian sea lion, you can find out where it goes. And now once you've
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got the mapping done, this is where the conservation begins, you
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can see the areas that are used by these eight sea
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lions. And then you're probably going to do more studies to find out where maybe
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another eight sea lions go, or maybe even more, maybe even less.
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You're going to see where those tags go. You're going to see what they
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see. You're going to be able to find out how diverse
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these habitats are, how small, how big. Are there areas where there's
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some that are bigger than others? Are there some that are like a lot of
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gradient habitats? We're going to see all of that
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in due time. But you get to do it without paying the expensive
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bill for a remotely operated vehicle, or a boat that
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you have to use a remotely operated vehicle on, or even a drone
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to be able to, if you can see these habitats, depending on how deep they are, you
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know, to take a boat that you have to take when you're over the water because
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for a drone, because you have to be near the remote control or
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near the drone when you're flying. So you can't, there's only a certain range you can fly
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off the coast. You have to have a boat. Boats are really expensive. Gas is
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really expensive and not every organization or
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researcher can afford that. It's not, very little can afford that, especially
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the boats that would be required to operate like a remotely operated vehicle. So
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it's kind of fun to see ecologists
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and conservationists to use an animal to say, hey, buddy, where
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do you go? Let me know where you go, and I'm going to try and protect that.
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So let's work together on this. And essentially, these sea lions are
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protecting themselves, which is great to see. That's what we want
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to see in the future. That's how we always want to see it. And so I
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feel like that's where we need to go. and use these
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types of techniques as long as they're safe for the animals, but
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you want to find out where these animals are going, especially animals that will
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cross a number of different habitats, this could be an important precedent
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to set and look for conservation and exploration
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of different habitats when you have these types of tags. Now, it's not
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going to be easy. There could be a lot of problems with tags. The
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glue may not hold. It may pop off a little earlier. Obviously, you
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don't want to harm the animal in any shape or form, so you have to follow specific
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protocols. Those change all the time, so making sure you stay up to
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date on those protocols. But the real frustration is if the camera
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doesn't work when you get down there, or maybe it gets scratched, or
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maybe the sea lion hits up against a
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rock, and that goes flying, or you lose it. you know there's a lot
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of it's not an easy thing to do it's not you just stick on the back and wait for
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the animal to come back and then you you do it and that's how they got the the tags by
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the way is they'd wait till the animals came back the mothers came back to
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feed their young and they would grab the the cameras off of them they would probably
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sedate them There's a picture on here, there's actually a video on here about
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where they go, it's really cool, I highly recommend you look at the link that
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I'm going to put in the show notes. But they also have to
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sedate the animal because it's going to protect itself, it doesn't know what you're
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trying to do, it doesn't know you're trying to help it, and so you have to sedate
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the animal, take that off, and so that's a process, and that's going to take a
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little time, and to make sure you map all these habitats using these
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animals takes a lot of time, but you have to remember They are animals and
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they need to be protected and they need to be treated properly and that's what these
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researchers are probably doing, I hope. I pretty much know
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because they have to follow specific protocols when dealing marine mammals and
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permitting and everything and so we're seeing that. We're
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seeing that being taken care of and hopefully, you know, in
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the future that will continue to get better and better and more animals will be
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able to tell us where they go and we can better protect them. So,
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that's it. That's the episode for today. I
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thought it was a fun article to go over. I'm going
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to put, like I said, I'm going to put the link in the show. There's a great video that I'll
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point you to on YouTube and in the article, and you can
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go and take a look at that. That was on fizz.org, a great site
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where I get a lot of my articles that I put on my newsletter. Which
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you can sign up for if you go to speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter
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You get a lot of these stories actually put the story in earlier in
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the week in one of those newsletters But now I'm talking about because I thought it
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was so interesting. I read my own newsletters, too But
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in those newsletters, I send them out Monday to Friday. I put in
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three articles I put in three jobs and I put in the latest podcast episodes
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that have been out on our network on speak up for blue network and And
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yeah, I just like to interact with you guys. So let me know what you think when you sign up,
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what you think of those newsletters. And
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I work hard on them. It takes me about a half hour to an hour
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every day to work on those. So that's five hours a week that I don't
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usually have. So I put them up on LinkedIn as well. So if you want to subscribe to
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my newsletter on LinkedIn, you can do so. But anyway, that's it for today's episode.
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I want to thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the How to
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Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time. And happy
