Question: Hi, I want to be a biologist too! What is the most recent study you have been working on?

Iain Staniland answered on 2 Nov 2018: last edited 2 Nov 2018 2:23 pm

That is excellent news, there are loads of careers you can do as a biologist.
My most recent study was tracking leopard seals in the Antarctic. This involved attaching tiny light loggers to the seals as they were sleeping. These loggers record sunrise and sunset and from these we can work out roughly were the seal was on any given day. We tracked the movements of 6 leopard seals recording their migration from the ice around the Antarctic Continent to the Sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia where we see these animals every winter. They like to hunt the seals and penguins that live on South Georgia but also eat the krill (small shrimp like creatures) that is plentiful in the waters around the island.
If you look on my profile page you can see an small animation of the leopard seals movements. I published this in a scientific paper that you can read if you are interested, this is how I tell other scientists and interested people what I discovered.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comments?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0197767
or as a more simple summary
https://phys.org/news/2018-06-secret-life-enigmatic-antarctic-apex.html