By moving objects around in the sea, the oceanic mammals are showing they’re not as distant from one another as previously thought, according to a new study.
The research, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that moving objects like corals, clams, fish, crustaceans, whales and dolphins can be a great way to explore the ocean floor.
It suggests that this might be a good way to study the deep sea environment.
The study was carried out by researchers at the University of Sydney, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), the Australian Museum, the University College of New South Wales, the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), the University Of Queensland, and the Royal Australian Museum.
They were interested in how objects moving in the ocean affect the movements of fish, corals and other marine life.
“It’s a really important area,” said lead researcher Dr Tim Jones from the University’s School of Biological Sciences.
“The animals that move, like coral and clams and fish, they’re moving in all sorts of different ways.”
“The oceanic ecosystem is very diverse, and there are lots of different types of animals that can move.”
What’s really interesting is that we’re using these new methods to get at this diversity in different species.””
I think we have to recognise that we don’t understand the ocean well enough yet to move the ocean and understand how that works,” he said.”
We don’t have the knowledge about what the ocean looks like.
We don’t really know how the ocean works.
“If we do understand how the oceans works and what makes it work, then we can really use that to better understand the processes that govern these animals and the ocean.”
Researchers had previously assumed that moving animals like corales and fish were very far from one other.
However, the study suggests that moving underwater objects can be an effective way to look at the ocean.
“This study is a really powerful and exciting way to understand how oceanic animals interact,” Dr Jones said.
What the researchers found is that corals move closer to one another than previously thought.
“There are corals that are swimming close together and corals on the bottom of the ocean,” Dr Moore said.
“And these are the ones that are moving, so that’s where we think they’re at least moving together.”
“We can also see the movements that are going on underwater, and those are the kinds of animals you would expect to see moving in these kind of interactions,” he added.
“But we don´t actually see them moving like that.
They are not moving close to one other, but they are moving at very different speeds.”
The study used underwater video from a buoy-based instrument that tracks movement of different species of animals.
The researchers used the same method that they used to track the movement of fish using sonar.
The results showed that corales, coralline algae and the corallines, which are marine animals that live on the seafloor, move very quickly.
“You can see it [move] very quickly, even when you don’t see it,” Dr Almeida said.
The team is working to use the same technique to study corals moving underwater.
“I’ve been looking for years at what they are doing in the water and how they move, and I think this is really interesting and important,” Dr Nick Jones said, referring to the use of sonar to study animals moving underwater using sonars.
“Corals are really amazing organisms, and they are a really good model for studying the behaviour of animals in the oceans.”
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
