Developing Tools to Study Wild Marine Mammals
Animals under human care are used to develop tools and techniques to safely study marine mammals in the wild. This includes novel technologies to measure their behaviour and energy expenditure, validate techniques to identify what prey they are eating, develop safe anaesthetic protocols, and improve surgical techniques to temporarily examine wild marine mammals for treatment and study.
Projects and Recent Papers
Testing a new technique to measure body condition in Steller sea lions (partner: North Pacific Research Board)
[webref_pretty title=”Telemetry tags increase the costs of swimming in northern fur seals, {iCallorhinus ursinusi}”] [webref_pretty title=”On the utility of accelerometers to predict stroke rate using captive fur seals and sea lions”]
[webref_pretty title=”Averaged Propulsive Body Acceleration (APBA) can be calculated from biologging tags that incorporate gyroscopes and accelerometers to estimate swimming speed, hydrodynamic drag and energy expenditure for Steller sea lions”]
[webref_pretty title=”Effect of phylogeny and prey type on fatty acid calibration coefficients in three species of pinnipeds – implications for the QFASA dietary quantification technique”]