ELEPHANT seals in the Southern Ocean are giving scientists an insight into icy underwater environments usually inaccessible to humans.

Scientists say the information could have ramifications for understanding the effects of climate change on the planet.

Fifty seals have been tagged with sensors as part of an international project involving CSIRO and Antarctic Climate & Ecosystem Cooperative Research Centre scientists and their counterparts in the U.S., UK, Norway and France.

The primary aim of the tagging project is to learn more about the behaviour of seals and where they feed and swim but climate scientists can study the climatic conditions of oceans at the same time, using data from improved sensors attached to the seals.

They can study how rapidly sea ice forms as the seals swim around and under the sea ice in the Antarctic.

The more sea ice there is, the more heat is reflected from the planet.

The findings will be released tomorrow in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Co-author Dr Steve Rintoul said the seals went to parts of the ocean scientists cannot get to any other way.

"In the Antarctic we don't understand (the formation of sea ice) as well as we do in the Arctic and that is due to a lack of observations, but this is really closing a gap there," he said.


From http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,24164561-5006301,00.html