Australian Sea Lion Foraging Habitat from Animal-Borne Instruments

Eight adult female Australian sea lions from Olive Island and Seal Bay were instrumented with bio-logging devices. The data includes video imagery, GPS, time-depth, accelerometer, and magnetometer readings captured during single foraging trips lasting approximately 1-6 days. This project by the Australian Ocean Data Network provides fundamental information on critical benthic habitats and foraging behavior to support conservation actions.

Use Cases

• Mapping critical benthic habitats based on GPS and video imagery data.
• Analyzing individual foraging behavior differences using accelerometer and time-depth recorder data.
• Identifying prey preferences from video imagery captured by animal-borne cameras.
• Assessing ecological risks to sea lion populations based on habitat use patterns.

Strengths

• Data was collected from eight instrumented animals across two distinct locations.
• Multimodal data capture includes video, GPS, depth, acceleration, and magnetometer readings.
• Instruments were recovered after foraging trips, likely ensuring complete data retrieval.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the two specific study sites.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Animal-borne instruments (CATS Cam cameras and SPLASH-10 GPS loggers) glued to the pelage of sedated sea lions.

Time Range

Data captured during single foraging trips of ~1-6 days.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-27 17:52:59.506186; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Olive Island on the western Eyre Peninsula and Seal Bay on Kangaroo Island, South Australia.