Whales, seals, penguins and sea birds need krill and fish for their survival. We have to be sure that we can sustain fishing from Antarctica and the Southern Ocean in a way that does not threaten the survival of these predators. To do this simple and logical idea we have to understand some critical parts about how and where these species make their living.

Studying large, free-ranging marine mammals is very challenging task because they are:

often hard to find, and
almost impossible to follow at sea

This has meant that until recently we have understood very little about their lives, and it has been hard to predict if fishing practices are likely to affect them.

Some key advances in science and technology using non-lethal research now make it possible to piece together the daily lives of some of the marine mammals and other higher predators such as large pelagic fish, penguins and sea birds. The non-lethal techniques we use are molecular genetics techniques, satellite tagging, acoustic methods and aerial surveys.

Related Projects

Australian Antarctic science project #2683 - Passive acoustic monitoring of antarctic marine mammals
Australian Antarctic science project #2941 - Conservation and management science of marine mammals

This page was last modified on June 29, 2011.