{"id":2465,"date":"2014-07-21T11:17:27","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T16:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=2465"},"modified":"2014-07-21T13:22:42","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T18:22:42","slug":"seals-forage-near-man-made-structures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/seals-forage-near-man-made-structures\/","title":{"rendered":"Seals forage near man-made structures"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2424\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/76202_web.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2424\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2424\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/76202_web-300x144.jpg\" alt=\"This wind farm off the coast of Sheringham, UK is frequented by harbour seals, some of whom who use it as an artificial reef. (Photo credit: Mike Page)\" width=\"300\" height=\"144\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/76202_web-300x144.jpg 300w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/76202_web.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2424\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This wind farm off the coast of Sheringham, UK is frequented by harbour seals, some of whom who use it as an artificial reef. (Photo credit: Mike Page)<\/p><\/div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A new study shows that some harbour and grey seals are using man-made wind farms and undersea pipelines as foraging grounds. Seals were tagged with GPS tracking devices off the UK and Dutch coasts. <\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Scientists noted that a few seals &#8211; up to 30 per cent in some populations &#8211; foraged near offshore wind farms, including one that made striking grid-like movements, as though it was systematically checking out each turbine. Such structures may help seals by acting as artificial reefs and concentrating prey. However, it\u2019s possible that in the long term the new patterns could make prey species more vulnerable to collapse.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cell.com\/current-biology\/abstract\/S0960-9822(14)00749-0\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Original research paper<\/span><\/a>\u00a0published in the\u00a0journal\u00a0<em>Current Biology<\/em><em><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/em>on\u00a0<strong>July 21, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Deborah Russell, University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom<\/span><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study shows that some harbour and grey seals are using man-made wind farms and undersea pipelines as foraging grounds. Seals were tagged with GPS tracking devices off the UK and Dutch coasts. Scientists noted that a few seals &#8211; up to 30 per cent in some populations &#8211; foraged near offshore wind farms, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2424,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[39,170,1445,171],"class_list":["post-2465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-animal-behaviour","tag-biodiversity","tag-conservation","tag-ecology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/76202_web.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-DL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2465"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2470,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2465\/revisions\/2470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}