Original subtitles

Seals sea lions and walruses are pinnipants

a family whose Latin name means Wing or fin-footed

carnivorous marine mammals they spend much of their lives at sea but rest mate

and rear their young on land surprisingly their closest relatives are bears

33 diverse species of pinnipants scratch out a living in some of Earth's most hostile environments

and there's no shortage of predators with a taste for seal meat

around the globe many pinniped populations are growing While others are

crashing these wild fluctuations and numbers remain a mystery

at the open ocean Research Center specially trained sea lions help scientists investigate the animal's

energy requirements and Diving ideology in Vancouver's Marine Mammal rescue

center abandoned and injured harbor seals are nursed back to health and released into the wild

[Applause] at the University of British Columbia researchers study many facets of

pinniped biology you can learn a lot about animals from what they eat and

what they excrete remarkably intelligent and easily

trained seals and sea lions are popular attractions at Marine parks and aquariums

and like peanut pads in the wild these guys certainly love a big meal

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

Canada's West Coast a dedicated team of professionals work together to learn more about an intriguing group of

animals dinner pads more commonly known as seals and sea lions

veterinarians scientists biologists and students from the Vancouver Aquarium and

University of British Columbia are trying to answer several puzzling questions surrounding peanut beds

they also hope to unlock two great Marine Mysteries why are Stellar sea lions thriving in

Canadian Waters while in northern Alaska and Russia their numbers are falling at an unprecedented rate

and why are Northern fursio populations crashing in the Bering Sea

[Music] Training

at the UBC Open Water research station highly trained sea lions provide

researchers with new insights into pinniped behavior and biology [Music]

fresh seafood is the animal's Prime motivator and a key Training tool

gaining their trust and cooperation is challenging work they just need a little incentive fell

as he learned from the Wild Eagle quite a bit of Aaron when the Heron comes in to lay eggs and stuff there's a lot of it around they'll

definitely eat as much as they can pairing is a very high fat fish so it's very calorically dense it's got a lot of

energy keeps animals at a good healthy weight right now these animals reading between

five and eight kilograms of Herring a day we supplement the Herring with vitamins in order to replace the nutrients that

get lost in the freezing process unlike dogs that are trained with food and praise

sea lions are all about the treats we'll see Yarns are very food motivated

animals so we use Herring as their primary reinforcer to get them to do the research that we need them to do if you

walk out there and ask them to do something without a bucket of fish they give you a look that says uh where's my fish

and they won't actually do anything but when they see the fish they're ready to go and they'll do anything we ask them

it's first thing in the morning and the sea lions have a heavy day of in-water training

nothing gets their attention like a bucket of fresh herring

the stickers here has got a really cool vocalization

okay let's put uh let's put your harness on because we can attach all sorts of

different equipment to the harness and that way we can find out what's going on with the animals how much

energy they use how they swim all sorts of cool information

this device here is called a VHF tag and this transmits a radio signal so we know

where sikka is and we can track her wherever she goes so these are a couple

other cool pieces of research equipment that we use this is called an accelerometer and it tells us how she

swims this device here is called a Time depth recorder so this tells how deep she

swims uh it'll actually give us water temperature we have a camera here that we can mount

onto the harness of the sea lions and that way the animals can actually take their own uh their own video footage and

we can see really what the animals are doing when they're out in the wild and we can't see them

she's really a wild animal and sikka has all of those wild Tendencies we work

very closely with these guys to be able to have them used to us and used to other people around but it takes a lot

of time and patience to get to that point good girls zika

the first training exercises of the day are swim tests the animals are always eager to venture

into the Open Sea ready for a swim

okay go in the water that's sticker right here

so when I have tickets swimming along the boat here like this when I put my hand down

it means for her to go dive underwater and swim next to the boat and she'll stay down there for a short

period of time about 30 seconds even up to a minute sometimes and then if I raise my hand up

means for her to surface and that means I'm going to give her reinforcement that's what we call a bridge and a

bridge tells the animals when they've done the behavior that we've looked for

the seals and sea lions have got different ways to swim the seals use their hind Clippers they

rely on a lot of blubber to stay warm whereas the sea lions and fur seals are using their front flippers turns out to

be not the most efficient way to swim what we've learned here is that they're

not great divers we're really surprised to realize just that the average die time is only about

three minutes max and that turns out to be an efficient way that they can dive

continuously over and over

new technology has been instrumental in many recent breakthroughs at the research station

some of these advances come from surprising sources the electrical engineers and largely through the cell

phone industry have gone far faster and far further than what the biologists have been able to keep up with we can

now record data 16 times per second we've got three-dimensional accelerometers that measure forwards

upward sideways magnetometers now even gyroscopes so one thing we've been doing here is applying these brand new

technologies for the first time from that we can know exactly where they've gone in the ocean where they've dive to

how long they've stayed down and for the first time truly understand what the animals are doing when we can't see them

underwater animals as a really big reward when

they've done a great job and stickers done a great job today we like to give them a treat and that's important everybody likes to get treats sometimes

so now a treat for a sea lion like this is a big salmon so that's what I got here and Sega sees it

so there's a big salmon for sicka she's a pretty big animal

and she can eat a pretty big salmon now that is a treat

the Open Water research station has been the jewel in our Crown it's the most novel thing that anybody's attempted

no one thought it was possible to train Stellar sea lions to begin with but then to go that next step and say well now

we're going to open the door let them go swim and do what they want people said they're just going to disappear

Bonnie Dome but we had confidence in the trainers and they came up with a system

and it's worked beautifully and now literally it's like taking your dog out for a walk and taking it off leash and

they're doing these incredible things that no one ever thought would be possible I think that's an interesting thing this Bonnie

one piece will make 52 layers watch on mobile devices or the big screen all for

free no subscription required

Bonnie is resting inside her metabolic Dome we're trying to get a baseline measurement we don't know how many

calories does she burn just to rest and float in the Ocean Air is being drawn through this tube circulated and

continues through being sampled by our CO2 and oxygen analyzer inside the Stellar pilot in just a couple minutes

we can now start making her work for her food and for that we're going to find out how many calories does it cost a sea

lion to go down to depth to find its food eat it and come back to the surface

so we're just pumping the fish down in order to send it down 10 meters to the sea lion so that she can forage for the

fish at the bottom of the tubes are we good to go

the animal is swimming it's diving is coming back to the circuits he's doing what a sea lion would do naturally

what we're doing as scientist is we are sampling all the air that's breathing we're sucking you through the tubes

sewer analyzers and it's all ended up here on our laptop computer this is the data we need

the analyzers are reading the oxygen concentration and carbon dioxide concentration that is being produced

inside the Dome so that's telling us how much oxygen is being consumed by Bonnie and how much carbon dioxide she's

producing after every diet we can now do some bad calculations to

convert that into calories so now we know how many calories did animals spend to dive to different depths and to spend

different amounts of time underwater [Music]

pinnipans are generally very trainable animals but like many species they have

their difficult moments usually though they're a delight to work with and a favor of many trainers

stellers are a fantastic animal to train they're very stubborn and they can test you they make life interesting they keep

you on your toes for sure give me a kiss good does she love me no

she just loves the fish that I give her for doing what I ask her to do

our girlfriend

s this Behavior going back in cage to go home this is probably the most important

behavior these animals do so this one is always reinforced heavily

foreign ERS are giving us an enormous wealth of

data things that no one ever thought would be possible to do no one has ever tried to train Stellar sea lions to do

the types of things that they're doing here we're now getting into the heads and the minds of the sea lions We Now

understand what motivates them what the limitations are and that we can take this data and now reflect back on what

we've been observing in the wild to for the first time I think understand what's driving that system and why still the

sea lions are in trouble in Alaska it's the end of another research day and

time to head back to the facilities holding pens the sea lions of course always have the

option to Simply run or rather swim away to the open ocean but they never do

hazy Sitka and Bonnie like to have one last treat before retiring for the evening

[Applause] [Music] Harbor police sometimes drop off large

salmon confiscated from poachers and when whole salmon is the entree there's

a palpable excitement in the air good girl sometimes though a large fish

doesn't quite go down on the first try

[Music] Alaska

these remote Alaskan beaches were once crowded with Northern fur seals and Stellar sea lions

now the beaches are mostly barren millions of fur seals once congregated

on these Shores the purple violence of Alaska are located in the middle of the Bering Sea

it's like two floating aircraft carriers and that is the home base for thousands

thousands of seabirds and a 1.3 million Northern fur seals that was the mother lode

there's regions of the coastline and to go from California up into Southeast Alaska where we're seeing almost

exponential growth of elephant seals harbor seals California sea lions

Stellar sea lions as you go further north through the Gulf of Alaska all the

way over to Russia Northern Japan they've collapsed it's been this roller coaster dive over 80 percent of these

populations have just disappeared Curious Thing has been that they've disappeared under our watch we have all

this modern technology and we're left scratch our heads and there's no bodies

we don't know where they've gone what's happened to them [Music] Andrew Trice

thank you Dr Andrew Trice is one of the world's

foremost authorities on pinnipeds he heads The Marine Mammal Research Unit

at the University of British Columbia a lot of our Focus has been on

why are the sea lions declining why are the Ferris wheels declining in Alaska and a lot of people think that it's tied

into the types of fish that they're eating so we've brought fish from Alaska to our

lab here and we're trying to find out just how good is this fish how many calories does it have does it have

enough to make a sea lion healthy we need to know a couple things about the fish is it a sea lion eating size

how old is the fish and to find out how old fish are you

simply have to dissect their heads locate and remove their ear bones

just like on a tree I've got annual growth rings if we section that we can count the Rings to not hold the fish is

and finally we're going to take the fish and grind it up just as though it's ended up in a sea Lion's stomach

and we'll take a sample of that and put it into the balm calorimeter ultimately and we're going to burn that to see how

many calories does that whole fish have just as we would determine how many

calories are in the food that we eat using the same techniques to determine how many calories are in the food that

seals and sea lions eat a lot of what we know about the

nutrition of fish is both for humans where we just look at the fillets but of course the sea lion doesn't eat the

fillets they eat the whole fish so we have to do a full body workout

what they eat how much they eat and other nutrition data is crucial to understanding pinnipeds

but some of the scientists most valuable research tools are the animal species when you're working with poop you got to

make sure you glove up you can find so much information from poop it's not even funny although it's a

little bit funny as most people find out but you can find hard Parts uh which would be the undigestible bones that

animals are eating we can find their stress hormone levels from subsampling it from that we can now use new

techniques for getting genetics so we can find out what they're eating as well and compare it with those bones that we

pull out poop may very well be our most important scientific tool

what most people don't realize is just how much information is contained within a poop sample or what we call scats

these scat samples but just looks like waste lying on the Rocks contains an incredible amount of information that

helps us unlock the mystery of the animals lives

what I'm doing right now is I'm separating the hard parts and the harbor seal stats from the what we call the

Matrix material which essentially the you know the stinky part of the scat we're trying to quantify the

proportions of different species of prey DNA what we're trying to do now is go the

next step further and say go beyond just identifying what's there to actually quantifying the proportions

you really can learn a lot from what comes out of the back end of an animal what we have here is a CSI lab dedicated

to solving mysteries about seals and sea lions

universities are often at the Forefront of new ideas you've got some of the brightest youngest minds thinking

outside the box as we're able to combine skills from engineering statistics of

food and nutritional Sciences we're able to work across disciplines and do things in quite novel ways and come up with

with new techniques and original new ideas and insights into things that others may have missed completely Vancouver Aquarium

at the Vancouver Aquarium some of the star attractions are pina pads

but these animals are not just performers they're research partners

Stellar sea lions and Northern fur seals are key participants in ongoing studies into why the animals are disappearing in

Alaska and Russia I'm granny

Northern fur seals are just one of the calmest animals I've worked in uh

very little nervousness in most cases good eat

so right now I am just measuring Ani so I'm measuring her from the tip of her nose right to her tail

but while doing this we want to keep it very positive so I'm just feeding her throughout love her haircut

good open very good

Northern fur seal is an amazing animal to work training these guys is not too different than training a puppy you

start very very small their attention is going to be a lot smaller than an adult animal of course so we start very very

small with a lot of reinforcement

Chambers and we practice placing them in and out every pretty much every single day and

maybe once every couple of weeks every couple months depending on the study we will have them in there for a certain

amount of time usually about between 60 60 to 80 minutes and it measures her

resting metabolic rate pretty much all the animals that are here I've raised them from pups so there's definitely a

relationship between myself and the animals that are here at the aquarium and at our open water site

[Music]

we brought first heels from Alaska from the privilege Islands to the Vancouver Aquarium to help solve some of the

missing pieces of their life cycle we don't know for example how much food do they require are they getting enough to

eat we don't think about their growth curves we measure their lengths their weights understand what time of the year

do they need more food what time of the year do they need less these animals are helping us solve an

incredible ecological mystery that not only touches the Bering Sea but the entire North Pacific Ocean

[Applause] as a researcher I've got lots of ideas

of things we could do but I'm not an animal trainer I'm not a vet what I

realized early on is that nobody makes progress as a researcher alone it's only by working with others what the aquarium

offers is they've already have improved expertise in caring for animals they're phenomenal at training I also

recognize that it's expensive people don't appreciate what the cost is to

care for Animals the amount of individual attention one animal requires and admission fees at aquariums help

fund important research

person giving you a wave right here on the wild Coast is opposite to that green tent thanks for waving back and I'm

wondering how many of you are excited for the 12 o'clock steel and sea lion show

fantastic just the enthusiasm I was expecting because we're going to be learning about these incredible marine

mammals to succeeded this you need Partnerships and so we have a partnership with the

Vancouver Aquarium and they provide all the husbandry and training expertise

care of the animals and from the University we're providing the researchers the ideas and the hypothesis

tests but in the end it's a collaboration of ideas

[Music] after the performances there's still work to do especially with the Stellar

sea lions and fur seals get up

good and like their counterparts at the open ocean Research Center Aquarium animals also need a fishy incentive yeah

these animals are very food motivated fastest way to their heart to see the stomach accessories

[Music] training is not the only important facet

to benefit life at the aquarium keeping the animals fit both in mind and

body is a top priority for the staff

in the wild so we like to simulate back here with higher energy and jumps and

just general higher energy behaviors it's also a lot of fun for them to do as well

we give them toys and things to play with on a regular basis and we try to mix it up as much as possible to keep it

varied

thank you

Stellar sea lions are amazing animals to work with I mean to be able to have the relationship that we have with these animals and work with them day in and

day out it's definitely a pleasure they all have individual personalities and they all have different strength and

strengths and weaknesses and US kind of having to work with them keeps us on our toes and it's just really a lot of fun

to be able to communicate with an animal and have such a strong working relationship with them Veterinary Care

all the animals at the aquarium require extensive veterinary care it's a team

effort to keep all the benefits healthy [Music]

my job as a veterinarian at the Vancouver Aquarium is basically to maintain the animals in our collection

in the best health hospital so a large part of my job is designing a Health Management program for each of the

species that we deal with and that becomes very very individualized especially for the marine mammals

we do have animals living a lot longer than they would in the wild for example so we have a lot of these sort of old

age problems to contend with very old sea lions might develop cataracts we have potentially some arthritic issues

in Old sea lions certainly dental problems become an issue as any organism ages some of our old animals have come

up with Cancers as they've aged so it sort of becomes a sort of geriatric medicine

I've been working with pen of heads in particular for close to about 25 years now and every day I still find something

new that's absolutely fascinating about the species and honestly I've got the coolest

animals in the whole world to work with and I was fascinated by marine mammals as early as age seven and that's never

left me [Applause]

harbor seal mothers often leave their pops on Shore unattended when they head out to feed

baby animals are sometimes then abandoned or injured

many of them are eventually brought to the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Center

right now Janelle is doing a physical exam on this little girl Peyton who came in yesterday we do an exam on every

animal when they first come in so we check all the body systems just to make sure that everything's okay and check

and see if there's any wounds that kind of thing we started the tip of the nose and work

our way down to the tail so check all the sensory organs eyes ears mouth nose

uh teeth gums heart lungs uh gastrointestinal system musculoskeletal

system an estimate on how old we think they are and attitude wise so she's obviously pretty bright in other words

[Applause] majority of the animals that come into

our Center are harbor seals and a lot of them are neonates for the less than a weak goals when they first come into the center most part the harbor seals are

separated from their mothers for whatever reason that is other species of pinnipes could be disentanglements that

we brought them in for some of them are emaciated for other reasons so each case is different

the younger pups are briefly fed a special formula to simulate their mother's Rich milk

as soon as possible though the animals are introduced to fish the nutritious food they will need to survive in the

wild herring's a pretty high fat fish so for these guys when they're just weaning onto fish we want them to game off the

weed and get a good layer of blubber on them before they get released so this is Saturday so once the animals

are strong enough at a certain weight then we're able to actually start fish schooling them so what that means is

that we will offer them Herring some of the guys it takes a little bit longer to learn how to actually fish school and

catch the fish even chasing a dead Herring is critical training these marine mammals will need when they are

eventually released it still requires a bit of practice but normally would go the other way normally they go ahead

first but let me close your vote [Music]

many of the pups brought to the rescue center are in reasonably good health

most are just hungry and dehydrated however some have serious injuries or

infections that need prompt attention veterinarian staff from the Vancouver

Aquarium are brought in for exams and treatment when necessary this pup Beetlejuice had an eye injury

that might require surgery it's very much kind of a herd health approach to these guys there is

definitely initial physical exam and then as we notice other problems associated with their strandings but we

see secondary problems like a bad eye here in poor Beetlejuice and we get a little bit more intensive with their

examination with our care I think we have a very very good success

rate over the last um three or four years we've had a really really good success and and going you know 70 to 75

percent and and now approaching 80 success so so that's actually phenomenal

it doesn't take long for the pups to regain their strength and to thrive in a

matter of weeks they're nearly ready for release back into the wild these animals are those are pretty much

ready for release they've got about a week or two left in our Center most of them are over 15 kilos and they like

them to be about 20 20 plus kilos per release they're all competing really well for their food and they're getting

lots of conditioning time in the pool no we definitely like to make sure that they are healthy that everything is

running properly inside to give them the best chance of survival that we can while they're out there

with so many animals flooding into the rescue center it helps to assign them names

each year we have a naming theme this year it's astronomy it's a great opportunity for our volunteers and

people that have helped us out with the rescues to name the animals we don't call them by that name but it's more of Association so we can tell them apart on

paper you can definitely see a difference between a few of them and a lot of them have a lot of different markings

different colorings different facial expressions in general so a few of them we can tell apart just by looking at

them [Music] it's a huge team effort here with our

staff and our volunteers and we would not be able to run this whole Center without the help of our volunteers

I volunteer here at Marine Mammal rescue because I enjoy making a positive contribution to the environment seals

perhaps are not the most endangered species but they're an indicator species so when we see them come in we can see

oh our environment's doing pretty well and it's really fun to be able to say goodbye seal and when they go back to

the ocean Seal Fan Club

like sharks dolphins and other large aquatic animals seals and sea lions now

have an enthusiastic fan club in many parts of the world scuba divers

and snorkelers can swim with the animals in their natural habitat but some people question whether these

close interactions might alter the behavior of wild pinnipeds Seals and Sea Lions

foreign [Music]

Island diving has been operating for over 40 years a family-run business my

father started the business in the early 70s and now my wife and myself Amanda

operate the business we've introduced many divers to see Lions over the years

when we have groups that come we're very careful to give detailed briefings as to the etiquette in the water when we're

around the sea lions we like to make sure we don't disturb the animals on Shore resting is an important part of

their daily activity so we don't have any impact on that marine mammals

especially orcas and other whales are currently protected from disturbance by tourism activities

whale watching in particular is a closely regulated industry some authorities now want to give seals

and sea lions the same level of protection to the animals we're seeing here in this

area are transient animals they're here just feeding and they are going to follow the herring in this area until it

leaves the Strait of Georgia and then they will head off to their respective breeding grounds whether that's North or South from here most of the stellars we

see are from the Oregon coast so they will follow that hearing back out of the state of Georgia and Juan de Fuca and

then we'll continue their journey home

Canada's Department of fisheries and oceans or DFO has recently proposed new regulations restricting close approach

to all marine mammals including seals and sea lions if enforced these new

rules will effectively kill this fledgling industry Canadas Proposed Regulations

pinnipeds are intensely curious animals and scuba divers clad and neoprene and

sporting all kinds of interesting gadgets are impossible to resist so we just asked so groups are in the

water they keep them hands to themselves just allow the animals to come to them you know it's the animal's choice to come to the diver we don't ever allow

groups to actively go after sea lions but if the sea lion wishes to come and interact with the diver that's their

choice they have their mood some days they're not interested in you in the least bit and other days they're very

interested they want to test every piece of equipment you have just like big dogs playing with you in the water

you know they get very excited anything in the water whether it be a diver or a stick floating by they're just eager to

interact with it and try and figure out what it is

the question remains does this type of interaction negatively impact the behavior and well-being of marine

mammals especially seals and sea lions the jury is still out on the issue

the interaction of scuba divers and sea lions does have some controversy some

people in DFO believe that we're negatively impacting the behavior of the sea lions we've done this for enough

years that our philosophy of our business is you know we're very careful to how we interact with animals and if

we felt we were having a negative impact on the animals we would change our operating procedures

foreign thing these playful sea lions seem to

enjoy having the divers pay them a visit [Music] Race Rocks

okay guys welcome board the Juan defico Warrior uh we're heading out to race rocks we're nine miles right out into

the middle of Wanda Fuca street but a 15 or 20 minute wreck today

so welcome to race rocks you guys we're just entering the uh entering the park we're not allowed to Anchor it's high up

he over the side of the boat tied to the kelp any of that sort of stuff in here there is a speed limit in

here for boats too vessels aren't allowed to go any more than five knots over ground we call this out here race rocks the

bachelor pad for the sea lions these are all uh males done their business and they're coming and relaxing on the rocks

Julie Bowser is one of the island student caretakers to host some rare visitors on her remote

Outpost I thought we'd say hi before we go out for a dive Julie invited the divers onto

the island for a quick tour before the team donned their scuba equipment race rocks is a National Historic Site

and a strictly protected ecological preserve situated in the Strait of Juan de Fuca

its rugged Shores are battered by strong winds and tidal currents it's an ideal resting spot and haul

outside for pittipeds many of these animals are exhausted from long migrations along the coast

the original 80-foot tall Lighthouse from 1860 still stands today

massive Granite blocks quarried in Scotland were shipped around Cape Horn to construct the tower's base

to try and keep those places natural as it can be for the species out here

mainly my job is to watch out for the boats out here so whale watchers that come in and get too close or speed

through the reserve and they act as a disturbance to the whales and the sea lions and the seals race rocks is also

an important bird sanctuary at certain times of the year the island is packed with nesting sea birds

the star attractions though are the seals and sea lions

we've been coming here in here for probably 30 years or so I mean the sea lions are usually here all the time although the numbers change throughout

the year as they move around I mean there aren't so many right now I mean at this time of year their numbers are fairly low but uh at certain times of

the year there'll be hundreds and hundreds of them here

all right unlike at Hornby Island the California and Stellar sea lions at race rocks

weren't so eager to join the divers the level of interaction On Any Given dive is entirely up to the seals and sea

lions well we first got in it was three Slim Pickens they weren't too active so we

went right up against the Rocks popped our heads up a couple of times and they're all in this line they're soaking up the sun they weren't interested in

coming and playing and then all of a sudden big California came in and gave us a good flyby I mean you gotta

remember these animals a big males about 2 000 pounds plus and if they wanted to do damage to you

it certainly could I mean they're they're big animals so you have to you have to be careful

depending on how things rest with Canada's Department of fisheries and oceans new policies this type of diving

tourism may become a thing of the past Seals Sea Lions

globally most species of pinnipeds are generally thriving The Marine Mammal protection act of the

early 70s effectively ended commercial exploitation of seals and sea lions and

their numbers have rebounded some of the most visible components of the Marine

ecosystem are the seals and sea lions because they haul out we can count them if we see change in the numbers that

tells us something's going on pinnipeds are like the canary in the

coal mine it's an early warning indicator if you see the seals and sea lions declining it's telling you

something's not right the declines in the Gulf of Alaska

Aleutian Islands Russian Waters they all began in the late 1970s it coincides

with the buildup of fishing so I thought as most people thought well that's

pretty obvious and isn't it except that we couldn't find any connection between where the fish is operated the mounts of

fish caught the rates of decline nothing added up that then led us into looking at alternative explanations

we then ended up with a second hypothesis the first was that fishing had depleted the prey and so there was

less quantity the other was that in fact the quantity had increased but what was

different is that the quality had changed the diet of the sea lions in the past

was not caught Pollock they were eating in the past the oilier fattier fishes it was thought

well maybe there's something interesting wrong with this fish it became known as the junk food hypothesis which was they

were eating too much of low quality food in hindsight it probably should have been called the Nutrilite hypothesis or

the Locale hypothesis because what seems to have happened is there seems to be a lot of prey for them to eat but it's low

energy so it's effectively like people trying to live in a field of celery there's a huge biomass there there's all

kinds to eat but you keep eating and you'll be full and still hungry before you've ever gotten enough to meet your

needs so that was one of the hypotheses that

we tested with our captive seals and sea lions we fed them fish that they used to

eat in the past and we realized that they were very happy and content but when we put them onto a diet of pollock

what they're currently eating we discovered a really surprising thing which was that the young animals were

getting full before they'd eaten enough it was one of those moments where you go

of course an animal can get full but all of us have been thinking green mammals are just gluttons they never get

satiated they just eat and eat and eat no they're like people they can get full

and if you're a young animal and you fill your stomach with low energy fish you're not gonna make it

seals and sea lions were aggressively hunted for their Lush pills many peanut pads were considered threats

to commercial fishing and were slaughtered simply to reduce their populations but now the animals are

protected and their numbers are on the rise except in the far Northern Pacific

with chinipids you know we've now scratched below the surface and we're going deeper and deeper with it they

literally have been our eyes and ears into an entire ecosystem they're showing us things that we never

knew about they're making us realize how complex it is and also how careful we need to be about not tipping that balance further

[Music]

[Music]