We can marry elephant seals' migration tracks with satellite information about the ocean. It's likely that weanling or juvenile elephant seals feed in different areas than adults. We'd also like to know where the weanling elephant seals go when they first venture to sea, because more than 50% do not survive. It's important to know so that we can predict how a population of seals might fare as the climate changes.
http://www.elephantseal.org/E-Seals/tagging.html
Abstract in English
This project is a collaboration between Christophe Guinet of CNRS and Dan Costa / Patrick Robinson at UC Santa Cruz. Weanling elephant seals were equipped with satellite tags to record their first trip to sea!