Salmonella infections in Antarctic wildlife were first reported in 1970 and in a search for evidence linking isolations with exposure to human activities, a comparison was made of serovars reported from marine fauna in the Antarctic region from 1982-2004 with those from marine mammals in the Northern hemisphere. This revealed that 10 (83%) Salmonella enterica serovars isolated from Antarctic pe...

Figure 1. Who Eats How Much of WHAT? Estimated mean annual global catch/food consumption of marine mammals and fisheries by 9 major food types during an average year in the 1990s expressed as proportions of total (from Kaschner, 2004) 138. The percentages of different food types in marine mammal consumption were computed based on diet composition standardised across species 96. Corresponding pe...

Among terrestrial mammals, the morphology of the gastrointestinal tract reflects the metabolic demands of the animal and individual requirements for processing, distributing, and absorbing nutrients. To determine if gastrointestinal tract morphology is similarly correlated with metabolic requirements in marine mammals, we examined the relationship between basal metabolic rate (BMR) and small in...

Marine mammals present a unique opportunity to study the course of evolutionary development of visual processes in their adaptation from a terrestrial to an underwater environment. The ambient light conditions in the oceans differ considerably from those on land and pose different challenges to the visual system. The optic mechanisms and the retinal structures of the eyes of marine mammals show...

The long-term consequences of climate change and potential environmental degradation are likely to include aspects of disease emergence in marine plants and animals. In turn, these emerging diseases may have epizootic potential, zoonotic implications, and a complex pathogenesis involving other cofactors such as anthropogenic contaminant burden, genetics, and immunologic dysfunction. The concept...

Simple models are presented of the energetics of annual migration and of central place foraging, taking account of the speed and energy cost of the journeys. They are applied to insects, fish, birds and mammals of a wide range of sizes, which travel by flapping or soaring flight, by swimming or by running. It is shown that annual migrations of several thousand kilometres are unlikely to be bene...

This brief review is just that a far from definitive overview of the development of tagging as a tool for studying marine mammals, based on a quick and superficial review of the literature. My intention is simply to give participants a broad appreciation for some of the questions that have been addressed by tagging, what kinds of challenges have arisen in designing and applying tags to wild mar...

Little to no information exists for polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in marine mammals frequenting the highly urbanized southern California (USA) coast. Fourteen PBDE congeners were determined by GC-ECNI-MS in blubber of pinnipeds stranded locally between 1994 and 2006. Total PBDE concentrations (SigmaPBDE) in California sea lion (n = 63) ranged from 0.04 to 33.7 microg/g wet weight (mean...

Zoom to upper 400 m (near-surface sound channel) Numerical modelling of sound propagation is an essential tool to assess the potential risk of air-gun shots on marine mammals and derive exposure zone radii within which certain hearing thresholds are exceeded. Here, the results of a detailed 2.5D finite-difference (FD) modelling study are presented, which takes the sound velocity profile of the ...