Ecology, physiology and life history of marine mammals.

Interactions between the foraging behaviour and diving physiology: Interactions between foraging ecology and reproductive success; parental investment; interactions between marine mammals and the exploitation of marine resources; use of telemetry and remote sensing to study marine mammals at sea.

I have led SMRU's instrumentation group for many years.   We develop and sell advanced telemetry equipment for use on marine mammals, turtles and large sharks which collect and send behavioural and environmental information via satellites and mobile phone systems.  .  Current research involves developing the methodology for using marine mammals as oceanographic sampling platforms. We are have adapted our current Satellite Relayed Data Loggers (SRDLs) to become CTD probes and combine the temperature and salinity profiles they collect with location and behavioural information about the animal in the data stream relayed by the tags. We thus are able to use our subject animals to adaptively sample the ocean environment, providing information from logistically difficult areas or limited temporal coverage to  augment conventional oceanographic sampling. These devices have now been delivering large quantities of ocean data from large areas ofthe world's oceans and have been particularly important on the Southern and Arctic Oceans where sampling is difficult and costly. They are now recognized as an important part of the ocean observation system.

See http://www.meop.info/en/ and  http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~savex/

Our CTD-SRDLs will provide extremely cost-effective solutions to oceanographic sampling and monitoring programs, particularly in logistically difficult locations. The most recent large scale projects using the approach have provided more than 100,000 profiles in hard to reach polar oceans, even below ice.  Such programs are becoming increasingly important in the development of models that are used to predict consequences of climate change and marine exploitation. Thus, the development has potential commercial applications.