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Oxygen minimum zone: An important oceanographic habitat for deep-diving northern elephant seals

Abstract.

"Little is known about the foraging behavior of top predators in the deep mesopelagic ocean. Elephant seals dive to the deep biota-poor oxygen minimum zone (OMZ) (>800 m depth) despite high diving costs in terms of energy and time, but how they successfully forage in the OMZ remains largely unknown. Assessment of their feeding rate is the key to understanding their foraging behavior, but this has been challenging. Here, we assessed the feeding rate of 14 female northern elephant seals determined by jaw motion events (JME) and dive cycle time to examine how feeding rates varied with dive depth, particularly in the OMZ. [...]"

Source: Ecology and Evolution
Authors: Yasuhiko Naito et al.
DOI: 10.1002/ece3.3202

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