Seals Help Oceanographers Explore Underwater

Data collected by elephant seals in Antarctic waters provide a closer look at the processes driving ocean circulation.

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OMMAGERD, YOU’RE A SCIENTIST!: In Prydz Bay, Antarctica, a male southern elephant seal sports a state-of-the-art miniaturized conductivity-temperature-depth sensor that links to a data-collecting satellite.PHOTO BY CLIVE R. McMAHON

In the winter of 1999, Guy Williams took a trip to the Antarctic. A PhD student in oceanography at the University of Tasmania, he had become fascinated with the role polynyas—unfrozen expanses of water surrounded by ice—play in the cooling of large water masses at the Earth’s poles. Joining a research expedition, he travelled south from Tasmania by ship through the ice to the Mertz Glacier polynya in East Antarctica. The goal: to take measurements that would help model ocean circulation.

The survey was successful, but the voyage itself was something of an eye-opener. “I was very excited about going to Antarctica,” Williams recalls, “but I soon realized that Antarctica in wintertime is another kettle of fish. I got a real insight into how difficult ...

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Meet the Author

  • Catherine Offord

    Catherine is a science journalist based in Barcelona.

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