The colony of southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) at Pen & iacute;nsula Vald & eacute;s (Argentina) grew by 0.9% from 2000 to 2022, reaching a population of 18,000 reproductive females. In 2023, an epidemic of the High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza H5N1 virus led to the death of almost all pups and an unknown number of adults. We tested five scenarios that included complete pup mortality along with varying levels of adult mortality and reduced fertility. Newborn mortality had the smallest impact on the future population due to high natural mortality. Consequences of pup deaths will not appear until 2027, when those lost pups would have first reproduced. Scenarios including mature female mortality had more severe and immediate consequences, with a reduction in the breeding population in 2024 predicted to match the flu death rate. It took about 10 years for the population to readjust to the 2022 age distribution. In scenarios including adult mortality, it will take decades for the population to return to the 2022 level. The 2023 epidemic may thus reverse the conservation status of a population previously having no threats to continued growth.

Marine Mammal ScienceVolume 40, Issue 1 p. 322-325 LETTER Catastrophic mortality of southern elephant seals caused by H5N1 avian influenza Claudio Campagna, Corresponding Author Claudio Campagna [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-7971-5062 Wildlife Conservation Society, Argentina Program, Buenos Aires, Argentina Correspondence Claudio Campagna, Wildlife Conservation Society, Argentina Program, Florida 981 Piso 6, C1005AAS, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Email: [email protected] Contribution: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Supervision, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editingSearch for more papers by this authorMarcela Uhart, Marcela Uhart Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Tandil, Argentina Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center, One Health Institute, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, California Contribution: Data curation, ​Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editingSearch for more papers by this authorValeria Falabella, Valeria Falabella Wildlife Conservation Society, Argentina Program, Buenos Aires, Argentina Contribution: ​Investigation, Project administration, SupervisionSearch for more papers by this authorJulieta Campagna, Julieta Campagna Wildlife Conservation Society, Argentina Program, Buenos Aires, Argentina Contribution: Data curation, ​Investigation, Project administration, Writing - review & editingSearch for more papers by this authorVictoria Zavattieri, Victoria Zavattieri Wildlife Conservation Society, Argentina Program, Buenos Aires, Argentina Contribution: Formal analysis, ​InvestigationSearch for more papers by this authorRalph E. T. Vanstreels, Ralph E. T. Vanstreels Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center, One Health Institute, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, California Contribution: Data curation, Formal analysis, ​Investigation, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editingSearch for more papers by this authorMirtha N. Lewis, Mirtha N. Lewis Centro Científico Tecnológico, CONICET-CENPAT, Puerto Madryn, Argentina Contribution: Data curation, ​InvestigationSearch for more papers by this author Claudio Campagna, Corresponding Author Claudio Campagna [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-7971-5062 Wildlife Conservation Society, Argentina Program, Buenos Aires, Argentina Correspondence Claudio Campagna, Wildlife Conservation Society, Argentina Program, Florida 981 Piso 6, C1005AAS, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Email: [email protected] Contribution: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Supervision, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editingSearch for more papers by this authorMarcela Uhart, Marcela Uhart Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Tandil, Argentina Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center, One Health Institute, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, California Contribution: Data curation, ​Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editingSearch for more papers by this authorValeria Falabella, Valeria Falabella Wildlife Conservation Society, Argentina Program, Buenos Aires, Argentina Contribution: ​Investigation, Project administration, SupervisionSearch for more papers by this authorJulieta Campagna, Julieta Campagna Wildlife Conservation Society, Argentina Program, Buenos Aires, Argentina Contribution: Data curation, ​Investigation, Project administration, Writing - review & editingSearch for more papers by this authorVictoria Zavattieri, Victoria Zavattieri Wildlife Conservation Society, Argentina Program, Buenos Aires, Argentina Contribution: Formal analysis, ​InvestigationSearch for more papers by this authorRalph E. T. Vanstreels, Ralph E. T. Vanstreels Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center, One Health Institute, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, California Contribution: Data curation, Formal analysis, ​Investigation, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editingSearch for more papers by this authorMirtha N. Lewis, Mirtha N. Lewis Centro Científico Tecnológico, CONICET-CENPAT, Puerto Madryn, Argentina Contribution: Data curation, ​InvestigationSearch for more papers by this author First published: 25 December 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/mms.13101Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. 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In this paper we present SES Dashboard, a linked data platform developed to manage information of Southern Elephant Seals ( Mirounga leonina Linnaeus, 1758) from Península Valdés colony (Patagonia, Argentina), collected over more than two decades of research. Southern elephant seals spend most of their time foraging at sea, alternating with two short and highly synchronized haul-outs ashore for breeding and molting. On land, the distribution of the colony extends along ≈350 km, while at sea individuals travel thousands of kilometers The information recorded is mainly based on georeferenced data from censuses, bioregisters (trajectories at sea and hydrographic profiles), and bibliography based on the above data. SES Dashboard was released in 2021 and published following the principles of Linked Open Data to improve its visibility, to make it shareable, extensible and easily reusable through a SPARQL endpoint.

The dataset comprises geolocalised records of dive and surface interval durations, light level and temperature of the seawater during the post-resting and post-moulting tracks of 13 immature southern elephant seals, Mirounga leonina . It describes an unpublished open access version of the original data with records of light level and temperature of the water column using the Darwin Core standard (DwC) through ArOBIS, guaranteeing compliance with the FAIR principles, encompassing a wide time scale (2005, 2006 and 2007) and geographic range in the South Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (South West [-58.75, -81.29], North East [-37.60, -28.65]). Seals were simultaneously equipped with affordable light–temperature loggers (LTLs) and satellite tags. The LTLs recorded light level and temperature of the water column at 30-s intervals during dives and light–time records were applied to estimate dive parameters of diurnal records from 06:00 to 17:00 h, since movements up and down the water column are reflected by changes in light level. For that, the minimum light level reached at the surface of a dive was determined experimentally with diurnal dive simulations at sea using the LTLs devices before deployment. The dataset also includes variation of light and temperature of records between 17:00 to 06:00 h. Data can be used to identify temperature changes associated with seawater masses as drivers of the distribution of other taxa of interest and variation of light level in the seawater (light attenuation) could be linked to concentrations of phytoplankton assemblages as an index of primary productivity. This dataset provides unpublished data of the duration of dives and surface intervals and associated records of light level and temperature variations along the movements throughout the seawater of 13 immature southern elephant seals in the Southern Hemisphere. The location data were generated by satellite tags and the light and temperature data were recorded with light-temperature loggers (LTLs), both devices deployed on individuals simultaneously and uploaded following the Darwin Core standard and compliance with the FAIR principles.

Research on marine mammal habitat-associations often uses satellite remote sensing of sea surface temperature, chlorophyll concentration, and sea surface height to map mesoscale features, which may indicate areas of enhanced productivity and prey availability. However, for species that feed at depths >400 m, the increased productivity associated with mesoscale features observed near the surface may have little or no immediate effect on habitat-associations at depth. As a result, previous studies have found a weak correlation between mesoscale features and the movements of marine mammals. The advantage of biologging is that hydrographic variables are recorded in situ and at foraging depths using animal-borne instruments with sensors for temperature, conductivity (salinity), and dissolved oxygen. The goal of this study was to characterize the habitat-associations of female southern elephant seals (SES) from Península Valdés, Argentina during the post-breeding foraging trip. Although female SES exhibited significant habitat-associations with sea surface height anomaly and chlorophyll concentrations, the presence or absence of eddies was not predictive of foraging behavior, and the majority of foraging dives (74%) and prey encounters (77%) occurred in the absence of eddies. The strongest habitat-association was with deep (>500 m) and cold (3.73 ± 1.29 °C) subantarctic water, primarily during foraging dives from dusk to dawn. Female SES made most of their foraging dives (68%, mean maximum depth of 539 ± 226 m) and had the most prey encounters (67%) in Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW), which is formed near the Subantarctic Front on the northern flank of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Our results suggest that AAIW is the principal foraging habitat of female SES from Península Valdés, which may not be directly associated with near-surface mesoscale features. Future research on the habitat-associations for SES and other deep-diving marine mammals should focus on indices of foraging success and the hydrographic features of water masses at foraging depths, not mesoscale features observed near the surface.

Direct measures of body mass of marine mammals are logistically complicated to obtain even for pinnipeds. An alternative method for mass estimation based on 3D imaging technology and automated processing algorithms, was tested in southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina). Two models of artificial neural networks (ANN)-nonlinear neural network and self-organizing maps-were trained to compute the volume and to estimate the mass of the digital models, previously obtained by scanning individuals with an infrared light sensor. Body mass estimates were as accurate (mean % error = 4.4) as estimates in previous photogrammetry studies in southern elephant seals and the mass predictive ability of the trained ANN was higher (99% of the variance explained) than other predictive models using photogrammetry in pinniped studies. While this method has proven to produce accurate body mass estimates, it also overcame some of the constraints of other indirect techniques, avoiding animal disturbance caused by physical restraint or chemical immobilization, minimizing risks, and capitalizing on the time working in the field. The results of these estimations were promising, which shows that the proposed methodology can provide adequate results with lower logistic and computational requirements.

This article describes the publication of occurrences of Southern Elephant Seals Mirounga leonina (Linnaeus, 1758) as Linked Open Data in two environments (marine and coastal). The data constitutes hydrographic measurements of instrumented animals and observation data collected during censuses between 1990 and 2017. The data scheme is based on the previously developed ontology BiGe-Onto and the new version of the Semantic Sensor Network ontology (SSN). We introduce the network of ontologies used to organize the data and the transformation process to publish the dataset. In the use case, we develop an application to access and analyze the dataset. The linked open dataset and the related visualization tool turned data into a resource that can be located by the international community and thus increase the commitment to its sustainability. The data, coming from Península Valdés (UNESCO World Heritage), is available for interdisciplinary studies of management and conservation of marine and coastal protected areas which demand reliable and updated data.

Elephant seals, Mirounga spp., are highly dimorphic, having different energetic requirements according to age and sex, and foraging in various ecological and oceanographic contexts. Resource partitioning has been shown for the sub-Antarctic populations of southern elephant seals, M. leonina, where colonies are surrounded by narrow shelves that deepen abruptly. In contrast, seals from Peninsula Valdes (Argentina), in the northernmost extent of the breeding range, face an extended, shallow, temperate, and productive continental shelf. We integrated tracking data from 98 animals (juveniles and adults, males and females) gathered over more than two decades, and found that although all available habitats were used, individuals segregated by age and sex. Juvenile males favored shelf habitats, whereas subadult and adult males also used the shelf break. Juvenile females preferred the shelf and the more distant Argentine Basin used by postbreeding and postmolt adult females. Males showed the highest proportion of area-restricted search locations, suggesting more spatially concentrated feeding activity, and likely reflecting a preference for foraging habitat and prey. Our results are consistent with those from other populations, implying that elephant seals show remarkable similarities in habitat use by age and sex classes, despite broad differences in the offshore habitats between sub-Antarctic and temperate ecosystems.

Climate Change hazards to social-ecological systems are well-documented and the time to act is now. The IPCC-SROCC used the best available scientific knowledge to identify paths for effective adaptation and mitigation of climate change impacts on the ocean and cryosphere. Despite all the evidence highlighted by SROCC and the key role of the ocean and cryosphere for climate change at all levels, Latin America (LA) faces challenges to take effective action mostly due to socio-economic vulnerability, political instability and overall technical capacities. Countries have adopted diverse actions as the information needed by policy makers has been made available, not necessarily in accessible and inclusive ways. Regional imbalance in economic development, technological level, capacity development, societal involvement, and governmental oversight have contributed to skewed geographical and technological gaps of knowledge on key ecosystems and specific areas preventing effective climate actions/solutions. We analyze the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) from the region as proxies to the incorporation of IPCC recommendations. The gaps and opportunities for the uptake of ocean and climate science to political decision making is discussed as five key aspects: (i) climate assessment information and regional policies, (ii) knowledge production, (iii) knowledge accessibility, (iv) knowledge impact to policy, and (v) long term monitoring for decision making. We advocate that the uptake of SROCC findings in LA policies can be enhanced by: (a) embracing local realities and incorporating local, traditional and indigenous knowledge; (b) empowering locals to convey local knowledge to global assessments and adapt findings to local realities; (c) enhancing regional research capabilities; and (d) securing long-term sustainable ocean observations. Local and regional participation in knowledge production and provision enhances communication pathways, climate literacy and engagement which are key for effective action to be reflected in governance. Currently, the lack of accessible and inclusive information at the local level hampers the overall understanding, integration and engagement of the society to mitigate climate effects, perpetuates regional heterogeneity and threatens the efforts to reverse the course of climate change in LA. Local researchers should be empowered, encouraged, rewarded and better included in global climate-ocean scientific assessments.

El Procesamiento de imágenes es una de las ramas de la informática de mayor crecimiento en los últimos tiempos. Esto no solo se debe a la amplitud de sus aplicaciones, sino también a que el avance de la tecnología que se viene experimentando en estos años, junto con el surgimiento de herramientas para un rápidoaprovechamiento de las mismas, ha hecho posible que algoritmos cuyos costos de procesamiento eran muy altos hasta hace unos años atrás, puedan ahora ser ejecutados en períodos de tiempo relativamente cortos.Por otro lado, el abaratamiento de costos en elementos relacionados a la captura de información visual ha incentivado enormemente la realización de estudios afines a su aplicación fuera del ámbito industrial. En este contexto, los sensores de profundidad han abierto un nuevo campo de estudio permitiendo generar y trabajar con modelos tridimensionales de elementos del mundo real tal y como son en lugar de los modelos prediseñados.En el caso particular de la biología, se ha abierto una posibilidad de mejorar la manera en que los científicos obtienen información relevante a sus investigaciones, siendo este el caso del estudio de mamíferos marinos, más concretamente el Elefante Marino del Sur (Mirounga leonina).En particular este trabajo se enfoca en la búsqueda de algoritmos apropiados para la limpieza y análisis automatizado de modelos tridimensionales (nubes de puntos) de elefantes marinos. Dicho estudio brindaría a los científicos un método no invasivo para obtener medidas mucho mas rápidas y precisas que las proporcionadas por los métodos utilizados hasta el momento, a la vez que reduciría de manera considerable los riesgos (tanto para los científicos como para los animales) que estos conllevan.

In this paper we introduce recent efforts carried out by the OceanGraph KG project to integrate semi-structured or unstructured content. We present some of the practical applications of OceanGraph through use cases, and finally summarize the lessons learned during the development process.

Great progress to digitize the world's available Biodiversity and Biogeography data have been made recently, but managing data from many different providers and research domains still remains a challenge. A review of the current landscape of metadata standards and ontologies in Biodiversity sciences suggests that existing standards, such as the Darwin Core terminology, are inadequate for describing Biodiversity data in a semantically meaningful and computationally useful way. As a contribution to fill this gap, we present an ontology-based system, called BiGe-Onto, designed to manage data together from Biodiversity and Biogeography. As data sources, we use two internationally recognized repositories: the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS). BiGe-Onto system is composed of (i) BiGe-Onto Architecture (ii) a conceptual model called BiGe-Onto specified in OntoUML, (iii) an operational version of BiGe-Onto encoded in OWL 2, and (iv) an integrated dataset for its exploitation through a SPARQL endpoint. We will show use cases that allow researchers to answer questions that manage information from both domains.

Increasing ocean temperatures severely affects marine species and ecosystems. Among other things, rising temperatures cause coral bleaching and loss of breeding grounds for marine fish and mammals. Motivated by the need to understand better these global problems, researchers from all over the world generated huge amounts of oceanographic data during the last years. However, most of this data remain isolated in their own silos. One approach to provide safe accessibility to these silos is to map local, often database-specific identifiers, to shared global identifiers. This mapping can then be used to build interoperable knowledge graphs (KGs), where entities such as publications, people, places, specimens, environmental variables and institutions are all part of a single, shared knowledge space. This short paper describes one such effort, the OceanGraph KG, including the modeling and publication processes, and the current and prospective uses of the dataset.

The foraging strategies of gestating female elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) from Peninsula Valdes, Patagonia, were assessed by analyzing the values of stable isotopes of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) from whiskers of 60 weanlings as a proxy for maternal spatial niche utilization. The data were combined with isotopic values and at-sea satellite locations of juvenile seals and adult female satellite tracks to provide classifications of the likely foraging strategies of the mothers of the studied pups. Based on at-sea locations during the austral summer, females foraged in oceanic waters while juveniles foraged both in neritic and in oceanic habitats. Weanling isotopic values (n = 60 pups) ranged from -19.9 to -14.8‰ for C and from 10.6 to 18.9‰ for N. The degree of variation of spatial niche distribution exhibited individual patterns of habitat use over time and revealed significant intra-population differences. Ten percent of the individuals exhibited neritic maternal foraging (δ13C = -15.6 ± 0.5‰, δ15N = 17.3 ± 1.1‰) and high consistency, thus suggesting specialization (%CV δ13C values = 0.3 to 2.2), while 90% of the individuals exhibited oceanic maternal foraging (δ13C = -17.9 ± 0.7‰, δ15N = 12.4 ± 0.5). Additionally, oceanic maternal foraging could be further classified to distinguish broader individual variability: 58% were specialists (%CV = 0.03 to 2.2), 30% were intermediate specialists-generalists (%CV = 2.5 to 4.5), and 12% were generalists (%CV = 5.0 to 7.3). The prevailing strategy for females was oceanic foraging as exhibited by location at sea and the greater extent of oceanic habitats (88%) potentially available for foraging. At the population level, the existence of both alternate foraging strategies and high individual variability exhibited by gestating females in a high-quality foraging area such as the oceanic environment of the Argentine Basin may confer an ecological edge to these females to succeed in a less predictable (although fairly rich) environment, thus influencing population trends.

The goal of this study was to classify dives of free-ranging female southern elephant seals Mirounga leonina from Peninsula Valdes, Argentina, during their 2 mo post-breeding migration. Classifications were based on 3-dimensional movements and video-recorded observations from 13 797 dives obtained by attaching video and data recorders to the backs of 8 seals. We inferred behavioral functions for the dive classes based on video-recorded observations. Three dive types were identified: foraging, resting, and transit. Most (98%) prey captures occurred during foraging dives, and primary prey were pencil smelt and myctophids. Over deep water, foraging dives were deep (maximum depth 553 +/- 258 m, mean +/- SD), long in duration (21.5 +/- 5.8 min), and meandering with bursts of speed, steep descent and ascent angles, and vertical head movements associated with prey capture. Resting dives were shallower (maximum depth 375 +/- 114 m) but lasted longer (22.6 +/- 6.2 min), with lower stroking rates and speeds and greater variation in pitch and roll angle during descent. Transit dives were shallower (maximum depth 307 +/- 171 m), shorter (19.9 +/- 6.6 min), and more linear, with higher swim speeds and stroking rates, shallower ascent angles, and farther straight-line distances traveled. Seals exhibited several strategies to reduce the energetic cost of foraging, including gliding during descent, swimming at optimal speeds for energy savings during foraging dive ascents, ascending at the most cost-effective angles during transit dives, and resting preferentially during daytime hours when prey are deepest and foraging dives are less efficient.

Nature-based tourism is increasing in recent decades. In Peninsula Valdes, Patagonia Argentina, Natural World Heritage area, the tourism is one of the main economic activities of the region, based on watching marine wildlife. The southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina) colony in Peninsula Valdes is the only continental in the southern hemisphere. The objectives of this study were to evaluate two bout groups of social actors linked to tourism (tourists and tour guides) the interest and their perception a watching elephant seals. Structured interviews to tour guides and tourists were used and developed a workshop for tour guides. Both groups agreed that watching wildlife is the main goal for the visit, and the southern right whale is the species that generates more interest, whereas the elephant seal is secondary. The experience of watching seals in their habitat was satisfactory in the different observation areas, being observation distance and number of animals, decisive factors in tourist satisfaction. Due to size, sexual dimorphism and behavior that characterizes to elephant seal it generates feelings of wonder and curiosity to the visitors and is an important resource during the guided tour. However, it is not sufficiently exploited as an opportunity to communicate conservation problems of the species or the marine habitat. The results are key tool to designing future management and planning strategies of tourism in Peninsula Valdes and adjacent areas.

The data management landscape associated with the Global Ocean Observing System is distributed, complex, and only loosely coordinated. Yet interoperability across this distributed landscape is essential to enable data to be reused, preserved, and integrated and to minimize costs in the process. A building block for a distributed system in which component systems can exchange and understand information is standardization of data formats, distribution protocols, and metadata. By reviewing several data management use cases we attempt to characterize the current state of ocean data interoperability and make suggestions for continued evolution of the interoperability standards underpinning the data system. We reaffirm the technical data standard recommendations from previous OceanObs conferences and suggest incremental improvements to them that can help the GOOS data system address the significant challenges that remain in order to develop a truly multidisciplinary data system.

The emergence of uncontrollable noise from diverse sources possess several difficulties in scanning 3D objects. In the case of animals in the wild this is especially hard to manage since their movements are unavoidable during the acquisition process. This causes distortions that compromise the reconstruction process significantly, rendering the whole acquisition procedure useless, or in the best case requiring strenuous assisted editing tasks in order to obtain viable results. In this work we propose a method for detecting and filtering noisy zones in meshes generated through point clouds acquired from in-situ scanning southern elephant seals in their natural habitat. We trained a CNN model with meshes resulting from noisy and clean acquisitions. The trained neural network is able to filter, in subsequent acquisitions, those parts in the mesh that do not belong to the original objects. This greatly reduces or eliminates the amount of manual editing work that is required in order to obtain a useful acquisition.