Stellar sea lion research

NOAAs National Marine Mammals Laboratory tracks Stellar sea lions in the North Pacific Ocean using blended altimeter data, including TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason OSDRs (SSH and current velocity vectors) from the University of Colorado's CCAR group. The data indicates that the sea lions travel 100's of miles across the North Pacific from shore to feed around the edges of ocean eddies. The figure on the left shows a mesoscale cold-core eddy near the Aleutian Islands, and the figure on the right indicates a cold-core eddy spun off the Alaska Stream. Each image is one tagged animal, with red vectors show heading and mean speed on a given day.