Seals Benefit from Shipwrecks and Pipelines, GPS Tracking Data Reveals

30 Jul 2015

A study which looked at Australian fur seals located in the Bass Strait and their feeding behavior found that things like pipelines, shipwrecks, and cables benefited these animals in their underwater world.

What researchers found was that these types of structures were actually acting as artificial reefs and attracted fish and various other marine life. Because of this, hungry fur seals get their fair share of a variety of squid, bony fish, and octopus.

The study’s underwater ‘seal-cam’ footage and GPS tracking data revealed that the Kanowna Island colony animals which were off Wilsons Promontory favored certain foraging routes.

Deakin University’s John Arnould stated, “In one case we looked at the GPS track and it was a straight line, which made us think that the seal might be following fishing vessel”.

The researchers, on closer inspection, realized there were other things at play; the foraging path of the animals mirrored a pipeline and other animals were doing the exact same thing.

The Bass Strait’s underwater infrastructure includes communications cables, the Basslink high-voltage power pipeline and numerous wells and shipwrecks.

The findings, which were published in the PLOS ONE journal on July 1, 2015, revealed how the fur seals were benefited by this infrastructure because as it was formed as an artificial reef, marine life gathered up and formed what seemed to be a sandy seafloor with not much habitat variation.

Australian fur seals, according to Associate Professor Arnould, appeared to have cottoned-on as it fed almost entirely on the seafloor.

He said that some of the individuals, where they were foraging seemed to be influenced while the other 36 studied didn’t seem to be heavily influenced by the artificial structures where they were foraging.

The research team, which also included scientists from the University of California Santa Cruz and University of Tasmania, also studied how far the seals were feeding from the infrastructure.
In some instances, it was as much as 100 meters; however, Associate Professor Arnould stated that this was still an indication that the artificial environment did indeed have an impact on foraging behavior.

There were a total of 36 Australian fur seals that were fitted with a dive recorder and GPS tracker as part of the study. There was an underwater camera placed on two of the seals on their dorsal fur.

Back in the 1800s, the seals were heavily hunted for their coats and the Australian fur seal population became as low as 20,000 seals. However, they are now protected and the population is now recovering to around 2 percent more a year or 3000 pups.


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