Showing posts with label deep-diving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deep-diving. Show all posts

Thursday, 6 November 2014

Benefits of being fat (but not too fat) for deep-diving elephant seals


Date:
November 5, 2014

Source:
University of California - Santa Cruz

Summary:
Researchers using a new type of tracking device on female elephant seals have discovered that adding body fat helps the seals dive more efficiently by changing their buoyancy. The study looked at the swimming efficiency of elephant seals during their feeding dives and how that changed in the course of months-long migrations at sea as the seals put on more fat.


Thursday, 27 March 2014

Beaked whale is deep-dive champion

By Jonathan AmosScience correspondent, BBC News

The elusive creatures are very difficult to study

Cuvier's beaked whales are likely to be the most extreme breath-holders among marine mammals.

A satellite tag attached to one of these animals, swimming off the coast of California, recorded a dive to nearly 3km below the ocean surface that lasted 137 minutes.

This performance exceeds that for any southern elephant seal, which is also known to be an extreme breath-holder.

The Cuvier's record-breaking dive is reported in the journal Plos Biology.

Erin Falcone is a research biologist with the Cascadia Research Collective in Washington State, US, which led the research project.

She told BBC News that beaked whales had very high levels of the myoglobin protein in their muscles, to the point where the tissues appeared almost black.

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