Sea Animals Are Doing Climate Change Research

Elephant seals, narwhals, and leopard seals are helping with research that could save their habitat.

1. Scientists wanted to study a type of very cold water deep in the Atlantic ocean.

The “Atlantic bottom water” helps control the movement of all the world’s oceans.

Image by Handout / Reuters

2. But it’s so deep and remote that it’s inaccessible by ship.

I think you can see where this is going, and where it’s going is awesome.

Image by Handout / Reuters

3. Solution: elephant seals!

“The seals went to an area of the coastline that no ship was ever going to get to,” said sea ice specialist Guy Williams. They are intrepid explorers: “Several of the seals foraged on the continental slope as far down as 1,800 meters (1.1 miles), punching through into a layer of this dense water cascading down the abyss,” said Williams. “They gave us very rare and valuable wintertime measurements of this process.”

Image by Handout / Reuters

4. Their research could help with climate change modeling.

Learning more about trends in Antarctic bottom water could help scientists predict how climate change will affect the oceans.

Image by Handout / Reuters

5. The seal researchers are also adorable.

A little ice on the sensor and the whiskers does not bother this stylish sea mammal.

Image by Handout / Reuters

6. Elephant seals aren’t the only ones involved in research. Narwhals have carried sensors too.

They helped scientists learn that the water beneath the ice of Baffin Bay, in the North Atlantic, was warming.

Image by Kristin Laidre, NOAA, files / AP

7. So have leopard seals.

They’ve measured water temperature in Antarctica. Climate change threatens the habitats of many marine mammals, but the data they gather could help to save them.

Source: images.newscred.com

The harp seal has yet to participate.

Video available at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-pv8D-ydR1s.