Living in a fluid-dynamical landscape : how do marine predators respond to turbulence? ...

• Main Author: Della Penna, A
• Format: Thesis
• Language: unknown
• Published: University Of Tasmania 2023
• Subjects: Elephant Seals
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.25959/23240210; https://figshare.utas.edu.au/articles/thesis/Living_in_a_fluid-dynamical_landscape_how_do_marine_predators_respond_to_turbulence_/23240210

Marine top predators play a fundamental role in maintaining the structure and functioning of healthy marine ecosystems. In the last decades the development of bio-logging (i.e. deployment of autonomous recording tags on free-living animals) has radically changed the study of top predators and their interactions with their environment. Combinations of sensors measuring position (Argos and GPS), environmental properties (water temperature, light) and proxies for foraging behavior (accelerometers) have enabled relating migrations of large fish, marine mammals, sea turtles and seabirds to basin scale patterns of ocean currents, temperature, and productivity. However, what influences marine predators' movement at smaller spatial and temporal scales, such as the ones they experience during their foraging trips, is still largely unknown. This project analyses the interaction between marine top predators (elephant seals and macaroni penguins) and sub-mesoscale (few days-months, 10-100 km) ocean dynamics. This is ...