SealCam: Pinniped Paparazzi Shoot Fish

With a little help from a group of Weddell seals, a team of marine scientists has uncovered new information about the two ecologically most important fish species living far beneath the ice pack in the dark, frigid waters of Antarctica's McMurdo Sound.1 Behavioral ecologist Lee A. Fuiman of the University of Texas, Austin, biologists Randall W. Davis of Texas A&M University, Galveston, and Terrie M. Williams of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and their team at McMurdo equipped each

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This investigation actually emerged from data that these researchers and John Francis, of the National Geographic Society research and exploration committee, collected using mini-marine mammal cams over the course of three Antarctic summers in the late 1990s. The small packs—which feature a black-and-white video camera and data logger—are usually attached via a wet-suit-like belt and produce illumination through an array of near-infrared light emitting diodes (LEDs). (Infrared light is invisible to seals and fish, the researchers believe, and therefore does not interfere with normal behavior.)

Lightweight and unobtrusive, the camera/data logger devices allow the researchers to videotape the mammal's movements and interactions with other species, taking the scientists to go on virtual journeys into oceanic worlds. Those virtual journeys returned a host of new data about those species' hunting habits, behavior, and deep-diving physiology.2,3

The revelations about the silverfish and toothfish species represent important new information, says Fuiman, especially considering ...

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