Weanling tracking data: the first trip to sea!

UC Santa Cruz and a collaborator from CNRS in France
(Christophe Guinet) attached satellite tags to two weanling
elephant seals.  Each seal was equipped with two tags (to tell
the difference between tag failure and mortality).  This is the
first migration for these seals, so we are very interested to
see where they go!

Click here for the live tracking data!

Elephant seals are important for climate change research

The elephant seal research being conducted by Dan Costa and
his team of researchers is being highlighted as an important project
for understanding the effects of climate change in our oceans.

Click here to see the full story!

Gull foraging behavior revealed with GPS tags

Dr. Scott Shaffer, a professor at San Jose State University, and his
students have been studying the western gull population at Año Nuevo
Island.  By attaching small GPS loggers to them, he can track their
movements during foraging trips.  His preliminary results show that
some gulls forage at sea, but many simply head down to the Santa Cruz
Resource Recovery Facility (i.e. the dump).