scientist have recruited the most adorable inquiry partner — ocean lions — to serve them study ocean floors . With the assistance of these favorable mammals , researchers from the University of Adelaide and the South Australian Research and Development Institute aspire to well read the ocean bottom of the southerly Australian coast .
For thestudy , published inFrontiers in Marine Science , scientists attached tiny , lightweight cameras and tracking musical instrument to eight Australian ocean lions from the Olive Island and Seal Bay colonies . The equipment time in at less than1 percentof each animal ’s weight unit and admit them to move freely . The researchers also chose female sea lions , know they would have to come back to land within a few days to nurse their pups ; by the time the sea beast returned they had register 89 hours of usable television between 16 and 360 foot deep . you may catch a clip from the footage showing a sea lion with her offspring below .
After the scientists analyzed the recording , they identified six types of seabed home ground : quick study / Baroness Dudevant , bare grit , macroalgae reef , macroalgae meadow , invertebrate reefs , and invertebrate bowlder . This new entropy , combined with days of oceanographic data , start the researchers to build machine - learning example predicting which home ground can be get hold across Southern Australia‘s continental ledge .
Why sea lions?you may ask . Researching seabed home ground is no promiscuous task for humans . Scientistsare forced to use tricksy - to - operate remotely manoeuvre submerged vehicles , or ROVs , to capture footage . This method require plentiful sentence , money , and personnel office , and can only be accomplished under sealed conditions precondition . ocean lions , meanwhile , are well - adapted to explore the seafloor . They hatch more basis more quickly than ROVs and are less unnatural by forged weather condition . Plus , outfitting the predators with tiny tv camera is more cost - in force than ramp up and operating a full vehicle from scratch .
away from map unexplored areas , animal - borne video recording data point make surveying home ground forendangered specieseasier . Marine population have decreased bymore than 60 percentin the past four decades . Scientists can expend this inquiry method to gain more comprehensive information about a jeopardise animal ’s habitat while measure other organisms .
