Preliminary results from MEOP Norway

MEOP Norway deployed 3 tags on hooded seals in the summer moulting season in July of 2007 in the West Ice. This was followed by the deployment of 17 additional tags on this species in the breeding season in March of 2008 (a little to the south of the moulting deployments), just north of Jan Mayen Island.
Seal tracksSubset of hooded seals tracks from MEOP – Norway deployments of CTD-SRDLs. Image: MEOP-Norway project team
Data is still very actively incoming from the northern deployments of MEOP Norway, and data-flow will hopefully continue until July of 2009 from some of these tags.  We are in the “early days” with respect to data analyses, but these seals are certainly doing their job. They have travelled broadly and provided excellent oceanographic coverage of a vitally important ocean sector – the Fram Strait (and beyond). The hooded seals have shocked us with the extent of their distribution, reaching 89° N and 59° N to the south.
 
Our Southern Ocean deployments in MEOP Norway also went very well. All 20 instruments in the programme were successfully glued onto southern elephant seals (with just one member of the deployment team needing stitches) in the moulting period in late January and early February on Bouvetøya.
 
More info is found in the status updates for MEOP Norway.
Published Wednesday April 01 2009 by Martin Biuw