<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/07/australia-sea-lions-cameras-ocean-floor>
"The Australian sea lions glide and dart through underwater tunnels, over
seagrass beds and rocky reefs, searching for a meal and dancing with dolphins
around a giant bait ball of fish – all the action captured by a camera stuck on
their back.
“I can watch this stuff for hours,” says Prof Simon Goldsworthy. “It’s like the
best slow TV ever. You just don’t know what you’re going to see next.”
The Australian sea lion is in trouble. They were hunted until the early 20th
century. Commercial fishing nets and pots have proved to be a more modern
threat.
Numbers have crashed by 60% in the past 40 years, leaving only about 10,000 of
them mostly spread thinly across 80 breeding sites along Australia’s south and
west coastline.
Goldsworthy’s “slow TV” is the result of new efforts to employ the sea lions to
map the ocean floor – and their own habitats – by sticking cameras with
satellite tracking to their backs.
So far, eight females from two seal colonies have filmed almost 90 hours of
footage across more than 500km, helping scientists to map 5,000 sq km of
habitat. The sea lions have mapped rocky reefs and seagrass meadows along the
continental shelf, and shown humans the places that are important to them.
With that information, conservationists will have much clearer ideas on how to
protect the country’s only endemic seal."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
