Dr Hosegood explains how physical oceanographic processes strongly influence the behaviour of animals living within the marine environment. To learn more about Marine Science at the University of Plymouth visit: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/schools/school-of-biological-and-marine-sciences/marine-science
Uh my name is Phil hos good I’m from the University of Plymouth and I’m a physical oceanographer on This research Expedition I’m looking to understand the physical drivers for the Manta foraging within hanif rub so most of the research to date has been focused on quantifying the number of mant
That aggregate within the bay it’s understood or hypothesized that the reason they aggregate is linked in some way to Tidal flow and the accumulation of uh Z Plankton their food so what I’m interested in from a physical oceanographic perspective is how the ocean currents and the water properties change throughout tidal cycles and
Longer and are responsible for that dense aggregation of The Zo plankton in the bay so the two principal pieces of equipment I’m using on This research Expedition which is somewhat limited by the practicality I involved of operating in such a confined area and on a small
Boat are um firstly uh ctd which stands for conductivity temperature and depth and I’m using two of these one of these on a bed frame that I’ll talk about in just a second and another which I’m using to profile from the surface to the seabed a CDD tells us the basic water
Properties so it tells us the salinity the temperature and at what depth we’re making the measurements and from this we can tell when the actual water masses which are entering the bay are changing the other key pieces of equip piece of equipment that I’m using is an acoustic Doppler current profiler so
This is essentially a current meter that uses acoustic pulses to measure the velocity of the water above the instrument in addition to measuring the currents the specific instrument I’m using also has a number of special features which are going to be particularly useful for this project not
Least of which is the echo sander mode which is a vertical beam which sends acoustic energy vertically upwards and and measures the intensity of the echo returning to the instrument and what that enables us to tell crucially is the density of zoo Plankton passing over the
Top of the instrument so in addition to the currents and how these these change throughout the tidal cycle and over longer periods it also gives us a very very high resolution detail of the zoo Plankton that are passing over the top of the instrument In my mind I think the the the the crucial step we’re taking in this project is to start drawing together the different disciplines to provide a much more integrated understanding of how these very specific animals the Manta use a specific site and by providing that integrated understanding we really
Understand much better how the manay use their habitat and that understanding can then be applied to other sites so whilst This research is specific to hanifaru the understanding we gain about the behavior of man and the way that they respond to the environmental conditions is something that can then be applied to
Conservation efforts worldwide
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