Seals, Sea Lions, Satellites Help Map Ocean

Don't let the sleepy gaze fool you. This elephant seal (top) is one of the hardest working oceanographers on NASA's team. Seals, sea lions, sharks, and other marine predators are taking part in a unique project to create a detailed three-dimensional map of the ocean. Using satellite tags traditionally harnessed for animal tracking, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), have outfitted their marine recruits to collect and transmit data such as water temperature and density...