Marine Mammals as Oceanographic Sampling Platforms

• Main Author: Thomas G. Smith
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Paine; Arctic cod; Boreogadus saida
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.553.1198; http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic54-3-350.pdf

THIRTY YEARS AGO, at a meeting devoted to findingnew directions for Arctic biological oceanography,it was suggested that marine mammals might some-day be used as “educated ” oceanographic sampling plat-forms. They are “educated ” because, through millions of years of evolution, they have developed the ability to find and consume such prey as the arctic cod, Boreogadus saida, a keystone (Paine, 1966) Arctic species that to this day has largely eluded the efforts of scientists who have tried to study it (Welch et al., 1993). The ice-covered and ice-filled waters of the polar regions have thwarted the attempts of oceanographers to study the Arctic marine ecosystem. Ship-based oceanographic work has been largely confined to the short open-water season, with only a few sporadic and fragmented attempts in winter to study the drift ice, ecosystems (Herdmann, 1948; McRoy