A Southern Indian Ocean hydrographic database obtained with instrumented elephant seals. ...

• Main Authors: Roquet, Fabien, Guinet, Christophe, Hindell, Mark
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: British Oceanographic Data Centre, Natural Environment Research Council 2014
• Subjects: oceans; elevation; location; Antarc*; Antarctic; Elephant Seals; Kerguelen Islands; Mirounga leonina; Southern Elephant Seals; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5285/f8f4dc5f-2eed-24ef-e044-000b5de50f38; http://www.bodc.ac.uk/data/published_data_library/catalogue/10.5285/f8f4dc5f-2eed-24ef-e044-000b5de50f38/

For around a decade, southern elephant seals (mirounga leonina) have been used to collect hydrographic (temperature & salinity) profiles in the Southern Ocean. CTD-SRDLs (Conductivity Temperature Depth –Satellite Relayed Data Loggers) attached to seals' heads in Antarctic and sub-Antarctic locations measure water property profiles during dives and transmit data using the ARGOS (Advanced Research & Global Observation Satellite) network (Fedak 2013). CTD-SRDLs are built by the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU, University of St Andrews, UK); they include miniaturised CTD units made by Valeport Ltd. When seals are foraging at sea 2.5 profiles can be obtained daily, on average. Profiles average 500m depth, but can be 2000m in extreme cases (Boehme et al. 2009, Roquet et al. 2011). Deployment efforts have been very intensive in the Southern Indian Ocean, with biannual campaigns in the Kerguelen Islands since 2004 and many deployments in Davis and Casey Antarctic stations (Roquet et al., 2013) more recently. ...