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Conservation through Animal Collaboration: Sea Lions Mapping Benthic Areas · How To Protect The Ocean

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One of the big challenges when we try to find out information below
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sea level is to be able to see everything. It's really difficult to
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map areas that are important benthic areas like
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bottom areas like the seabed to find out which habitat is
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best to protect endangered species or to
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house really diverse areas. It's really difficult to find those
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out and a lot of times it's expensive to pay for remotely
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operated vehicles or deep sea submarines to be able to go
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out or even scuba divers to be able to go out and map the areas. Sometimes
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you're limited by area, you're limited by people
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power. It's very difficult. But here's an idea.
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What if you use animals to map those areas? That's what
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we're gonna talk about on today's episode because a new study has revealed sea
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lions have been used to map benthic habitats in Australian
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waters. We're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the
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Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey
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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with
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the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean
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by taking action. And on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about
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something that I have always been interested in, and that's mapping the
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ocean. Finding out as much information about the ocean so you can do more analysis
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and be able to protect the ocean better. It's how to protect the ocean. I
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wonder where we got that idea from. Anyway, just to give you
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a little background, growing up as a marine biologist after
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my undergrad and doing my master's, when I did my master's, I was introduced
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to a technology called geographic information systems. It's
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also known as GIS. If you don't know what that is, it's essentially
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a way to house information in a database with
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a GPS, basically a location. And so a lot of
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times when you're in the field and you're trying to map things, you're trying
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to find out things like, where are the coral reefs? Where are
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the seagrass habitats? Where are the mangroves? How far do they reach? How
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far do they go? How deep do they go? And where can
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we find animals that are associated with that? And can we map and predict
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where these habitats will be based on specific
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environmental conditions and sort of topography, like
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geography and geology and all that wonderful stuff? And so I
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learned that in my master's. In fact, normally when you do a research master's,
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I remember you do two to maybe three years
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at a school where you just do some field work, you run some
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analyses, you learn some new techniques, you get to interact
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and network with a number of different professors, people
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on your committee, you have to do testing, then you have to defend, and
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it's a big whole ordeal. Mine was a little bit different. I didn't do my full
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two to three years At my university, at Acadia University, at
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my graduate university, I actually did one year at the Nova
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Scotia Community College to learn about GIS. I
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was in their geomatics department and I learned about GIS and
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remote sensing. And when I learned about that, I was really interested
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in learning about how to use these technologies to
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map you know, benthic habitats, essentially the seafloor,
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you know, no matter how deep it is, how do we measure that? How do we find out
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what's there, especially when it comes to fish in
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macroinvertebrates like crab, shrimp, that was macroinvertebrates,
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really my master's thesis. That's what I looked at. And I looked at you
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know, what different assemblages were there, what different communities of
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macroinvertebrates were there along the Scotian Shelf, Nova Scotian Shelf
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and Bay of Fundy, and did they repeat, did they, did they typify an
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area? Were they all found in one specific area? There were four to five
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areas that were found over four years consistently, and
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how would that play a role in marine protected areas? But I
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digress, that was my master's thesis, if you ever want to talk to me about that, I'd
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be more than happy to go over that, that was almost actually it
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was 20 years ago this year crazy how long ago that was
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but I digress I did my year at the Nova Scotia Community College
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in their geomatics department in their geomatics school and then I did
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a year at my master's university at
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Acadia University and I was able to defend successfully that
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master's so I came out and I had a GIS background and
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I started to start you know explore what that meant
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and how I can use that for a lot of different analysis from creating maps
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to looking at spatial analyses of communities. It was a lot of
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fun. And that continued to persist as the technology got
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better. We started to get remotely operated vehicles and
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we started to get data from that. But the problem with those remotely operated vehicles
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is they were super expensive. You know, we even had not only underwater,
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but we had above water. We had LIDAR, which was just like a
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new technology back then, which was even more expensive
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to use. But it gave you like the benthic, like the depths of
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things underwater at a certain depth. It
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was pretty shallow, but you got to see the shoreline quite a bit. You
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got to be able to make predictions of what those areas would be based
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on depth, based on what's found there before. But it was really cumbersome. It
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was expensive. You had to have a lot of people on the ground to
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be able to ground through certain areas. It was a difficult process.
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It wasn't easy. And the ROVs, like using them was
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a lot of fun and you'd go to school for that and you can do that. I've never
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actually operated one, but I saw them being operated. I see people
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get this type of benthic data, but they were in very small areas and it was very
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difficult to cover a large area because it was so expensive. I
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don't know how expensive they are now, but I'm sure they're still more expensive than
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we would like. So it was difficult. Even
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though you had the technology to do it, now you have drones and you have
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specific satellites that can go in
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centimeters resolution. So you may be able to tell different coral
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reefs apart. You'd be able to tell some coral reefs from
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seagrass areas, from mangroves, and all this different stuff. It's
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a heavy burden to take. You have to be very
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technical. You have to know a lot about wavelengths and different
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narrowed resolutions and all this wonderful stuff, when satellites are
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going to pass, how to get rid of cloud cover. If you can't get
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rid of cloud cover, it's a lot. It's a lot of math. It's
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a whole field in itself. But
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when you want to use it for conservation, you want to be able to use it so
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it's effective in your decision making. And so some
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researchers did a study in Australia where
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they decided to say, hey, you know what would be a really good idea?
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is if we used animals for this type of stuff. Now,
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I want to talk, just before I go into the animals, I want to just talk a
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little bit about tagging. Tagging has been a really
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important technology, having satellite tags and
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small pit tags to be able to tell the distribution of
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a population of a species. So in other words, where do they go, how
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far, how long, sometimes how deep. you
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know, what's the temperature salinity depending on what's associated with the
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tag and you're able to be able to like see where
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they go in terms of a location. Like they'd have a satellite GPS
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or they'd have a PIT tag GPS where they pass these receivers and they'd be
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able to tell where they are and when they passed and what individual and
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all that kind of stuff. And that was great. That was awesome. But
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now we have something different. We have tags, but they're called
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camera tags. And camera tags allow us, the technology
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is that good where it allows us to mount a camera on
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an animal, whether it be a shark, a whale, any
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kind of marine mammal. And you get to see where they go. In
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fact, there's been some pretty interesting discoveries. Over
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at Beneath the Waves, Dr. Austin Gallagher and his crew were
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able to find out where one of the largest, I
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guess you'd call it patches, but habitats of seagrass are
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in the Bahamas and potentially in the world. and
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they were able to discover that by putting a camera tag on a tiger shark,
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an animal that they study regularly, and being able to see where it
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goes and how it goes. You may not have seen that if
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you just looked at a GPS, if it was just a regular tag without a camera, but
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now that you see a camera, you get to see visually, you get to
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see the bottom. Right, you're not making predictions, you're not diving on,
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you can see the bottom from the perspective of the back of
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a tiger shark. Well, a group of researchers in Australia
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decided to do that, but they're going to like, hey, you know what, there's this endangered sea
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lion that we really want to protect. Let's find out where it goes. And while we're doing that,
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let's map the habitats of where it goes by putting a camera tag on it. Wow.
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If you said that to me 20 years ago, I'd be like, that's crazy, you're gonna lose the tag, if
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that even exists, like tags were just new back then. I'd be like, there's no way
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that that's gonna work, no way. Well, it worked. Not only
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did it work, but it worked really well. They tagged eight endangered sea
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lions, and it kind
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of unraveled the mystery of some of the bottom areas that
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they were able to go into and that they were able to find some
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of the areas that they were finding and map about 5,000 square kilometers of
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seabed in Southern Australia. Now, that
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is something that is pretty cool. And
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they were able to get critical information that provided management
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to protect an endangered species, but could also be used
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to survey other marine species of interest. endangered
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Australian sea lions, so Neofoca cinerea, that's
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the Latin name, I'm not trying to swear on this, to carry cameras.
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So the resulting videos allowed researchers to identify previously unmapped
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benthic habitats used by the sea lions on the
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continental shelf. They published their results in Frontiers in Marine Science.
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So using animal-borne video, this is a quote, using
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animal-borne video and movement data from a benthic predator is
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a really effective way of mapping diverse benthic habitats across large
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areas of the seabed, said the first author, Nathan Angelakis, Angelakis,
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Angelakis? I'm not sure how to pronounce that. A PhD student at the University
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of Adelaide and the Southern Australian Research and
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Development Institute of Aquatic Sciences. So these data are
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useful both for mapping critical habitats for an endangered species, such
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as the Australian sea lion, and more broadly for mapping unexplored
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areas around the seabed. Now think about this. You don't know
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where this animal goes. You put this camera tag on the animal.
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You don't know where it's going to go. But you also want
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to know where it's going to go, and you know it's going to be a mystery, so you're tracking these
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animals. Not only are you tracking these animals, but visually you're able to
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see what habitats these animals go. Right,
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so for the project, eight adult female Australian sea lions
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from Olive Island and Seabay colonies were
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equipped with small lightweight cameras. So it's so light
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that they didn't want to affect the drag of the swimming, so they made it really,
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really light. The cameras and tracking instruments were glued to small pieces of
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neoprene that were then glued onto the fur of the sea lions, which
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doesn't harm the sea lions so in total the filming and tracking
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equipment weigh less than one percent of the lion's body weight the sea
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lion's body weight to prevent dragging effects and allow the animals to
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move without restrictions recordings were made over two to three days
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and they had over 89 hours of recordings it
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was actually quite amazing now
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what they're able to do is they're able to look at the video footage of
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89 hours and go through and say hey let's look at where
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this these animals went so they had eight animals went in all different
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directions and what they're out there doing is they're out there trying to
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get food for their newborns at their colonies so they're going
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around and trying to find food they're going all different places so they're going you
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know they all went to different a lot of them went to different habitats and
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they saw the different habitats that were around and because it had a gps
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on it they were able to tell where they were at any point i believe at any point
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in time or it's maybe it's just when they come back up to the surface i'm
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not too sure about that But it allowed them to move
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across benthic habitats across more than 5,000 square kilometers of
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continental shelf. And they're able to see what these animals were
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seeing as they went through. So that's always great
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to see. And so I just wanted to go over in
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this article that I'm searching for as we go. They went through a number
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of different habitats, six benthic habitats, macroalgae reef,
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macroalgae meadow, bear sand, sponge and
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sand habitats, invertebrate reefs and invertebrate boulders.
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So these are the different types of you know categories of
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benthic habitats that are in that area and they got to see all
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of it and they were able to make predictions based on these areas. They
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they sort of were very conservative and they only went to a small area but
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based on what they saw and how far out they saw they can make
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those calculations of look this isn't where you know the
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sponge sand area is and this is how big it is and
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this is invertebrate reefs and this is invertebrate boulder and then they can go out
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and ground truth it after to see hey how far off
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are we on this you know is this where the the actual location is
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how big is it were we close in our predictions of the size and probably that
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will be able that algorithm will be able to change over time but
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being able to see these differences in benthic
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habitats and how these marine mammals go and marine mammals are perfect for
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this and like animals like sharks are perfect because they're migratory species like
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they move over large areas they may not be fully migratory they
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may stay in one specific area but they move they move over a number
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of different habitats they're not like a crab that might stay in one
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habitat once it reaches adulthood and never really move through
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across like different habitats because that's the habitat it wants to stay in But
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when you have a sea lion, for instance, an
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Australian sea lion, you can find out where it goes. And now once you've
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got the mapping done, this is where the conservation begins, you
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can see the areas that are used by these eight sea
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lions. And then you're probably going to do more studies to find out where maybe
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another eight sea lions go, or maybe even more, maybe even less.
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You're going to see where those tags go. You're going to see what they
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see. You're going to be able to find out how diverse
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these habitats are, how small, how big. Are there areas where there's
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some that are bigger than others? Are there some that are like a lot of
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gradient habitats? We're going to see all of that
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in due time. But you get to do it without paying the expensive
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bill for a remotely operated vehicle, or a boat that
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you have to use a remotely operated vehicle on, or even a drone
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to be able to, if you can see these habitats, depending on how deep they are, you
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know, to take a boat that you have to take when you're over the water because
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for a drone, because you have to be near the remote control or
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near the drone when you're flying. So you can't, there's only a certain range you can fly
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off the coast. You have to have a boat. Boats are really expensive. Gas is
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really expensive and not every organization or
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researcher can afford that. It's not, very little can afford that, especially
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the boats that would be required to operate like a remotely operated vehicle. So
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it's kind of fun to see ecologists
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and conservationists to use an animal to say, hey, buddy, where
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do you go? Let me know where you go, and I'm going to try and protect that.
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So let's work together on this. And essentially, these sea lions are
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protecting themselves, which is great to see. That's what we want
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to see in the future. That's how we always want to see it. And so I
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feel like that's where we need to go. and use these
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types of techniques as long as they're safe for the animals, but
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you want to find out where these animals are going, especially animals that will
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cross a number of different habitats, this could be an important precedent
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to set and look for conservation and exploration
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of different habitats when you have these types of tags. Now, it's not
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going to be easy. There could be a lot of problems with tags. The
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glue may not hold. It may pop off a little earlier. Obviously, you
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don't want to harm the animal in any shape or form, so you have to follow specific
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protocols. Those change all the time, so making sure you stay up to
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date on those protocols. But the real frustration is if the camera
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doesn't work when you get down there, or maybe it gets scratched, or
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maybe the sea lion hits up against a
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rock, and that goes flying, or you lose it. you know there's a lot
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of it's not an easy thing to do it's not you just stick on the back and wait for
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the animal to come back and then you you do it and that's how they got the the tags by
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the way is they'd wait till the animals came back the mothers came back to
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feed their young and they would grab the the cameras off of them they would probably
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sedate them There's a picture on here, there's actually a video on here about
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where they go, it's really cool, I highly recommend you look at the link that
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I'm going to put in the show notes. But they also have to
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sedate the animal because it's going to protect itself, it doesn't know what you're
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trying to do, it doesn't know you're trying to help it, and so you have to sedate
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the animal, take that off, and so that's a process, and that's going to take a
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little time, and to make sure you map all these habitats using these
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animals takes a lot of time, but you have to remember They are animals and
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they need to be protected and they need to be treated properly and that's what these
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researchers are probably doing, I hope. I pretty much know
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because they have to follow specific protocols when dealing marine mammals and
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permitting and everything and so we're seeing that. We're
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seeing that being taken care of and hopefully, you know, in
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the future that will continue to get better and better and more animals will be
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able to tell us where they go and we can better protect them. So,
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that's it. That's the episode for today. I
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thought it was a fun article to go over. I'm going
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to put, like I said, I'm going to put the link in the show. There's a great video that I'll
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point you to on YouTube and in the article, and you can
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go and take a look at that. That was on fizz.org, a great site
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where I get a lot of my articles that I put on my newsletter. Which
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you can sign up for if you go to speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter
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You get a lot of these stories actually put the story in earlier in
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the week in one of those newsletters But now I'm talking about because I thought it
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was so interesting. I read my own newsletters, too But
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in those newsletters, I send them out Monday to Friday. I put in
17:47
three articles I put in three jobs and I put in the latest podcast episodes
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that have been out on our network on speak up for blue network and And
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yeah, I just like to interact with you guys. So let me know what you think when you sign up,
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what you think of those newsletters. And
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I work hard on them. It takes me about a half hour to an hour
18:06
every day to work on those. So that's five hours a week that I don't
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usually have. So I put them up on LinkedIn as well. So if you want to subscribe to
18:12
my newsletter on LinkedIn, you can do so. But anyway, that's it for today's episode.
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I want to thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the How to
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Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time. And happy