Seals helped this oceanographer study the Southern Ocean 

While at Brown University in Providence, R.I., oceanographer Lily Dove studied the physics of Antarctica’s Southern Ocean with the help of some unusual, furry assistants: Antarctic seals. “They’re oceanographers,” she says. “They are regularly making dives in areas that we don’t often get to sample.”

Dove didn’t work with the seals directly. Instead, she interpreted data collected by the Marine Mammals Exploring the Oceans Pole to Pole program. This international group of scientists collects ocean data through sensors attached to the foreheads of southern elephant and Weddell seals. (Don’t worry. The animals don’t mind.) The seals dive more than 100 meters (330 feet) in search of food, allowing researchers to monitor temperature, salinity and pressure at depths inaccessible to human divers.

Let’s learn about Antarctica

Dove used these data to study how climate change is impacting the Southern Ocean. That’s the vast ocean that circles Antarctica. In certain areas of the Southern Ocean, atmospheri...