Feb

4

2007
 
 

Squid marks



Steller sealion (open wide!)Experiment shows how to estimate wild sea mammal diets

Rummaging through mounds of sealion poo might not be everyone’s dream vocation, but for Dom Tollit and colleagues at the Marine Mammal Research Unit, University of British Columbia, it provides a means to an end… so to speak. Testing (and no doubt hoping to uphold) the old adage of “what goes in, must come out”, they conducted a series of feeding trials on captive Steller sealions and report their findings this week. By searching for fish otoliths, bones and squid beaks, they were able to develop a method for back-calculating what a sealion ate, given its faeces. This should help conservationists to find out what’s been on the menu for sealions and other pinnipeds in the field.

Source: Tollit, DJ, Heaslip, SG, Barrick, RL & Trites, AW (2007) Impact of diet-index selection and the digestion of prey hard remains on determining the diet of the Steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus). Canadian Journal of Zoology DOI: 10.1139/Z06-174

Filed Under Marine, Monitoring | 

Email This Post Email This Post

Comments

One Response to “Squid marks”

  1. Muck spreadsheet : Journal Watch Online on October 30th, 2007 8:11 pm

    […] sheep they instead find themselves rummaging around in the undergrowth for evidence – you know, the usual kind – of activity. Bernd Gruber, an ecologist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, […]

Leave a Reply