Biography

Research Questions

I am addressing the following questions: 1) How do sea lions manage their oxygen stores while diving? 2) How do sea lions change their diving behaviour in response to different prey patches?

Approach

I am carrying out my research at the MMRU’s Open Water Research Laboratory and the Steller Sea Lion Lab at the Vancouver Aquarium.  We work with captive animals that are trained to dive in the open ocean and surface inside a metabolic dome where we can measure their oxygen consumption.  This can be converted into metabolism and energy expenditure, which can be used to determine food requirements for these animals.  We can record dive behaviour using video, time-depth recorders and accelerometers. We can also vary the amount, type and depth of fish to simulate different “prey patches” and record behavioural changes made by the sea lions.  The concentration of oxygen that the sea lions breathe inside the metabolic dome can also be altered to see whether it affects blood oxygen concentration and dive behaviour.