By: Stella Yang

How can sea lions help map the ocean floor? Well, today I’m going to tell you how sea lions can help us learn more about the mystery of ocean life.

A Ph.D student named Nathan Angelakis studies marine biology at the South Australian Research and Development Institute (Aquatic Sciences) and the University of Adelaide. He said that he wanted to study the ocean life, but said that the high tech cameras were too expensive to use, so he thought of an idea.

His idea was to use sea lions to explore the ocean instead. So, he teamed up with some sea-lion friends, their names were Daphene, Pheobe, Iris, and Pasithea. The idea they thought of was put a camera on a sea lions back while it was sleeping on the beach. They watched the sea lion go into the water and then were able to watch ocean life through the cameras, so it was a complete success. In one of the recordings it showed a sea lion mother teaching her sea lion baby how to hunt. With the recording of the sea lion teaching the sea lion cub they were able to get the video published. They hope that the recording can help the scientists out there understand more about sea lions and the interesting world of ocean life.