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What is the ocean's 'twilight zone' and how are elephant seals helping to monitor it?

Elephant seals are being used as nature's artificial intelligence to monitor the health of the oceans -- especially the little-known "twilight zone," an ecosystem abundant with fish that could soon be ...
Labroots

Elephant Seals: the Undercover Spies of the Ocean

The relationship between oceanographic conditions and predator population dynamics is a complex but critical area of study in understanding marine ecosystems. In particular, the northern elephant seal ...
Santa Cruz Sentinel

Tracey Weiss, Our Ocean Backyard | Welcoming the elephant seals and changing tides

As autumn turns to winter on the Central Coast, one of the markers of the changing season is the return of the northern elephant seals to beaches south of Big Sur and just north of Monterey Bay at Año ...
Mongabay

Seal ‘oceanographers’ reveal fish abundance in Pacific Ocean’s twilight zone

The open ocean’s twilight zone, a vast deep ecosystem rich in fish biomass, is poorly understood because it is expensive and challenging for humans to reach its depths 200–1000 meters (660–3,280 feet) ...
EurekAlert!

Elephant seals in the Pacific serve as deep-ocean sentinels, revealing patterns otherwise hard to measure

Northern elephant seals may hold the key to unlocking the secrets of the open ocean’s twilight zone (~200 – 1,000 meters deep). According to a new study, these deep-diving creatures can help estimate ...