Chapter 1: What makes Arctic seals risk their lives for a varied meal?
We're here because your heightened awareness deserves heightened entertainment. The Last Show with David Cooper Would you make the ultimate yuppie sacrifice? Would you risk your very life for a meal at an exclusive restaurant for a delicious and new seafood experience? Well, it turns out Arctic seals do exactly that. Well, not exactly that, but it's very close.
They trade safety from polar bears for a better, more diverse dinner menu. I'm here with Arctic scientist at the University of British Columbia, Katie Florco, who has researched just this. Katie, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
Chapter 2: Why do Arctic scientists choose to study seals?
I got to ask before we start, why seals? Why choose to research seals? What is it that you love about seals?
What's not to love? Seals are such a cool animal. They're mesopredators. That's what we call middle predators. So that means that they are predators. You know, they eat fish and invertebrates. And so they're the source of fear for many animals.
Chapter 3: How do seals balance being both predators and prey?
But they are also prey themselves. to polar bears primarily. And so they're balancing both of these sides of the equation. They're balancing finding food and avoiding becoming food. So they're a really cool animal.
And they're kind of like the cats of the ocean, and that's in fact what's true about house cats. They're both predators and prey, and that's what makes them so lovable. I'm picturing a polar bear and a seal, and I'm imagining kind of a pretty straightforward relationship. One is lunch, the other is prey. Is that the case, or is it a little more complicated than that?
It definitely is more complicated. There's nuances to these relationships, of course. But relatively, it's a pretty simple system compared to other systems. So seals are the main prey. These ring seals are the main prey of polar bears. And polar bears are the main predator of the ring seal. So it is a really tight relationship between those two.
So it's a really good study system to answer these ecological questions.
So let's get to the basic ecological question. A seal is willing to risk its life, risk an encounter with a polar bear just for a more tasty treat.
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Chapter 4: What ecological factors influence seals' feeding behavior?
What makes them do that?
So, yeah. So I think that it's, you know, if a meal is really good... No, it is a little bit more complicated than that. So we find that seals are looking for these areas where there's both a lot of prey and really diverse species assemblages of prey. So there's a bunch of archicod, there's capelin, there's sand lance, there's all of these different species.
So, you know, it makes sense that we're seeing that they're going into these areas and at the same time, they're also avoiding the high risk areas. However, it's this trade-off that we found that was really interesting. where they would enter these high-risk areas if the prey was really diverse.
Got it. So, side note, I'm getting hungry for seafood tonight. And what does it say about the animal that they're willing to endure that kind of fear? Like, what does it say psychologically about seals? Are they fearless, or do they know what they're doing? They just want that varied prey.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we haven't looked into the psychology of the seals per se.
They're not great subjects. They don't answer your questions.
Exactly.
Not yet, anyway. I think it is a sentiment of their flexibility. That, you know, there are certain conditions and contexts when they would enter those high prey areas. And this is the thing that has been seen in other species where, you know, maybe if a seal or if an animal is in poor body condition, they're more willing to do riskier things.
Your study mentioned something called the portfolio effect, which to me sounds like something that should be on a finance radio program. But here we are talking about marine ecology. What is the portfolio effect? Why do these seals want to diversify their food portfolio?
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Chapter 5: What is the portfolio effect in seal feeding habits?
For the seals, we have tags on the seals that are recording both their locations, their movements, and their diving behavior. And then for the fish, this is actually another part of my PhD. This is a big modeling exercise where we estimated how many fish were in the distribution of the fish across Hudson Bay. And then we projected that into the future as well, which was really cool.
looking at how those different kind of the prey field, if you will, or the number of fish are changing through time. And that was really helpful because there is not existing data for fish in the Arctic. It's a really big challenge. It's logistically extremely difficult to count the number of fish in an area, especially in the absence of big commercial fisheries.
And so that modeling exercise was a really critical piece to it as well.
I'm not trying to brag, but I've done it in a fish tank. I imagine it's not that much more difficult than the ocean. I'm kidding. I'm sure it's much more difficult. Okay. Now, we're talking about seals risking it all, entering areas where they might think polar bears are there, but how would they even know polar bears would be there in the first place?
That's a really good question. And that's something, you know, these tags are really good in that we're able to see what the seals are doing in high risk areas and are they avoiding them? And they are, and they're changing their dives and all these things. But we can't get that really, really fine scale decision making just yet. So one of the ideas I had with the tags was,
is maybe, you know, they're coming up from a dive slower. Because I thought maybe they'd be coming up from a dive slower so that they have time to maybe listen, to hear if there's a bear. But the bears are sit and wait predators for the most part. So they're sitting at a seal hole waiting for the seal to come up. So We did end up finding that.
And then I was also curious, you know, maybe they're going to come up slower or have a longer dive or a shorter dive. Maybe there are all these different thoughts I had. You know, they want to be able to suss out if there's going to be a bear at the surface. And then if there is, maybe they'll find another hole to the surface. But we didn't find any of those really fine scale relationships.
And I think that it's not to say necessarily that they don't exist. It may just be that we don't have really fine scale tags just yet.
We're talking about the Arctic. We're talking about seals. We got to talk about climate change. Is the melting of the ice, is the warming of the planet, is this going to change anything in this relationship between seals and polar bears? Do other predators come in? Do the seals fish in other areas? I got questions.
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Chapter 6: How do researchers collect data on seals and polar bears?
But if we continue our business as usual, the fish completely change in Hudson Bay. And so it's really a big question of how all of these different dynamics will affect each other and it'll all come into play.
Taking a step back, what does your research say about how animals, you know, make decisions under pressure, under threat of life?
It seems like it affects them on multiple levels. You know, they're avoiding these risky areas when they can. But I think that at a certain point, they can't always avoid polar bears. You know, they live in the same habitat as the bears and the bears that are looking for them. And so it seems like when they are under this pressure, they're just they're mitigating the risk by modifying their diets.
Well, Katie Florco is an Arctic scientist at the University of British Columbia. Katie, it has been a joy talking about your research. Thank you for joining me.
Thank you for having me.
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