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 of the pinnipeds with a sort of mini seal cam, then sent them down beneath the ice. "The objective of the research as it was initially planned and conceived was to study the Weddell seal," explains Fuiman. "We didn't expect to gather new information about fish species."
This investigation actually emerged from data that these researchers and John Francis, of the National Geographic Society research and exploration committee,...
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