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Datasets / Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN)

Southern elephant seal demography

Marine mammals abundance and distribution

The Southern Ocean has been disproportionately affected by climate change and is therefore an ideal place to study the influence of changing environmental conditions on ecosystems. Changes in the demography of predator populations are indicators of broader shifts in food-web structure, but long-term data are required to study these effects. Southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) from Macquarie Island have consistently decreased in population size while all other major populations across the Southern Ocean have recently stabilised or are increasing. Two long-term mark-recapture studies (1956-1967 and 1993-2009) have monitored this population, which provides an opportunity to investigate demographic performance over a range of climatic conditions. This provides insights on individual vital rates of known-age seals from Macquarie Island over extensively long timeseries.

Data and resources

Additional information

Temporal extent1956-01-01 – 2009-12-31
Date (publication)2020-03-17
Date (revision)2023-10-30
Statuscompleted
Update frequencynotPlanned
Metadata languageen
LicenseThe data described in this record are the intellectual property of the University of Tasmania through the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies.
Source metadataISO 19115 XML
Last updated2026-11-05
Created2026-11-05
APIpackage_show