Sea elephants spy on whales on a scientific mission
Marine biologists at the University of California are seeking to "hire" herds of sea elephants to monitor the activity of whales, particularly sperm whales, in the vast oceans.
The idea came by chance when a group of scientists discovered that during their efforts to eavesdrop on the ways seals communicate during their foraging operations, the recording devices they attached to them recorded the sounds of whales that were keen to swim in their surroundings while searching for food.
That coincidence inspired marine biologists to use elephants as "agents" to eavesdrop on other marine creatures, according to Fox.
Elephant seals spend about nine months each year at sea and travel through remote regions of the Pacific Ocean that would otherwise be difficult for scientists to survey.
And like migratory birds, seals return to the same place year after year, so researchers can equip them with recording devices and retrieve them relatively easily, according to Futurism.
Seals can apparently become 'good spies', as they seem heavy on shore, but they are nimble underwater creatures that spend months hunting offshore.
Seals descend about a mile under the water when searching for small fish, squid and even sharks, which makes them within hearing range of whales and other marine mammals, in addition to being noiseless, which makes the possibility of "polluting data" is weak, says Holger Klink, an expert in bioacoustics. at Cornell University who co-led the project
Perhaps most importantly, the elephants return to the same beach every year after a 75-day trip, which reduces the risk of losing the device, whose problem is that it does not send data, and each recording device is roughly the size of an old cell phone and costs about five thousand dollars. It will be able to measure depth and temperatures as well as determine the location and record the accompanying sounds.
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