CTD recorders attached to crabeater and elephant seals along the western Antartic Peninsula (wAP) during 2006-2008 provided vertical profiles of temperature and salinity with extensive coverage over the continental shelf and along the shelf slope. The individual profiles, obtained when the seals dive, ranged from 100 m to more than 1000 m and covered late summer through winter. These data allow assessment of the interannual variability in oceanographic conditions over a broad area of the wAP shelf. The seal-derived vertical profiles were analyzed by averaging in 1° latitude and longitude cells at monthly and annual intervals. Most cells on the wAP shelf had 10 to more than 50 dives below 150 m for each year. The averaged distributions produced from these data indicate the extent of onshore intrusions of warm CDW as well as the locations where the intrusions occur. In each year, intrusions occurred at persistent sites off Anvers, Adelaide and Alexander Islands. The seal-derived observations were also averaged over larger areas (250 x 250 km) at weekly intervals to identify conditions at the surface due to atmospheric exchange. Heat budget calculations show different conditions in each year due to differences in atmospheric conditions and sea ice cover. Additional studies average dives along the shelf break to capture the structure and variability of flow along the wAP shelf. These results demonstrate the utility of data collected by marine mammals to investigate oceanographic processes in areas that are not well sampled by other methods.

Dr. Klinck received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Physics from Clemson University and the University of North Carolina, respectively, and a Ph.D. in Marine Sciences and Engineering from North Carolina State University. He joined the faculty at Old Dominion University in 1989 and is currently the director of the Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography. His research interests extend from modeling marine diseases to modeling the circulation dynamics of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and coastal regions of Antarctica.

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