Elephant Seal Foraging Success and Dive Behavior from 609 Seals

609 southern elephant seals were tracked over multiple decades, providing a dataset linking dive behavior to foraging success. The data supports a 2025 PeerJ paper analyzing how transit rates and dive durations change with successful foraging. It is hosted by the Australian Ocean Data Network and includes analysis workflows for reproducing the study's figures.

Use Cases

• Modeling the relationship between dive effort and foraging success based on transit rate and dive duration metrics.
• Testing predictions of the marginal value theorem in a marine predator context using buoyancy-derived body condition data.
• Comparing dive behavior responses across different sexes and ocean foraging habitats.
• Reproducing ecological analyses and figures from the associated peer-reviewed paper using the provided workflows.

Strengths

• Data originates from 609 individual southern elephant seals, providing a substantial sample size.
• The dataset is multi-decadal, offering a long-term perspective on seal behavior.
• It is directly linked to a peer-reviewed 2025 publication in PeerJ, ensuring academic rigor.
• Includes analysis workflows and a readme for reproducibility of the paper's results.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The core dataset is hosted externally on the IMOS AODN portal, requiring separate access.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network (IMOS AODN portal) and associated Figshare repository.

Collection Method

Compiled from biologging tags deployed on southern elephant seals, recording dive data and inferring foraging success from buoyancy changes.

Time Range

Multi-decadal (specific years not stated).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-29 06:43:00.662000; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southern Ocean foraging habitats of southern elephant seals.