It's a good thing that seals don't hold a grudge. Otherwise, we would not be able to do valuable research on how climate change is affecting the world's oceans. Southern elephant seals spend most of their lives diving, which makes them the perfect employees to get readings of the deep seas, going deeper than people can. The seals can dive down to two kilometers deep (that's one mile and 472.2 yards deep). They also can gather information in real time that satellites can't provide and can work in the worst of winter weather. 

Living on land, the affects of our impact on the global climate can't always be seen. Not only is the break up of polar ice threatening the continued existence of elephant seals, but also of all the creatures that inhabit the polar ice, even for only part of the year. And then there are all those species that rely on the polar migrants.

Just Another Day at the Office

The Southern elephant seals don't send spreadsheets or Power Point programs to their bosses. They merely do their normal daily diving activities in Antarctica's  Southern Ocean while sensors strapped to them pick up and transmit all of the vitally needed data about long-term weather forecasting, rate of sea ice melt, global warming's impact on the oceans and ocean circulation.

The bosses are the University of St Andrews Gatty Marine Library in Australia who recruited 70 Southern elephant seals and equipped them with battery-powered sensors. The seals have been busy, recording over 35,000 pieces of data in one year. When the seals surface, the data from their sensors is transmitted to satellites and then transmitted back to earth through the Global Telecommunications Systems. 

Like most human workers, the Southern elephant seals had to be sedated before they could go to work. While sedated, the sensors were glued to their backs. These sensors were modified from water salinity and temperature tags placed on elephant seals years ago to study their behavior. These studies also showed that the melting of sea ice is negatively affecting the population of the Southern elephant seal, especially those who prefer to feed near sea ice.

More Diversity in the Workplace

The program with the 70 Southern elephant seals has been such a success that plans are under way for many more seal species to join in gathering information to save not only their habitats, but the entire earth. This plan definitely has our seal of approval (Sorry!)

But what if you live in a country that doesn't have a lot of seals?  You can then use grasshoppers, or at least, that's what scientists are doing in Great Britain. You don't even have to put any monitoring devices on them. Insects are migrating to different countries as the climate changes. Spotting how many species of grasshopper or cricket are in the UK can tell you how much the climate has changed.

As employees, neither seals nor grasshoppers ask for much in the way of compensation. Making sure the rest of the world's polar ice doesn't melt would be a good starting salary. By working together with seals and grasshoppers, it is a firm reminder that we are all in this together, animal, insect and human.