Chris Berglund

New research from @francae.bsky.social at SMRU has shown that the role of age in male humpback whale reproduction has changed as populations recover from centuries of exploitation.  

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https://ow.ly/5eot50YnUs9

#EverToExcel

A scientist in a white tyvek suit taking a nasal swab from a northern elephant seal

Quite the image from this sfgate story on the outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza influenza in a northern elephant seal rookery in California.

tinyurl.com/3ef9drek

I definitely had that same experience when I first moved to Scotland, and someone suggested I get pillows from John Lewis

I’ll start using their AI stuff if they can find a way to fit the entire model on 13 floppies

🦭 We have a new paper out! We developed an accessible framework for assessing the risk of collision between seals and operating tidal turbines.
⏭️ We found that most seal tracks moved near the turbine without collision.
Read it here: doi.org/10.1002/aqc....
@seamammalresearch.bsky.social

Temporal changes in the dietary niche of sympatric seals provides insight into the role of competition in population declines Competition theory suggests that interspecific prey competition can result in changes to the dietary niche, but obtaining timeseries of data from sympatric species experiencing temporal variation in ...

New publication led by SMRU's @izzylangley.bsky.social on competition between grey & harbour seals in Scotland using 20+ yrs of diet data. Many thanks to all who collected samples, and collaborators from the Lighthouse Field Station and Institute of Marine Research
#OA Paper: doi.org/10.1002/oik....

My goal in life is to see every species of sea lion, and NZ sea lions are probably the next one on my list. Such cool animals

Our recent paper on grey and harbour seal transboundary distribution made the cover of @jappliedecology.bsky.social! 😀🦭Thanks to Dr Kelly Robinson of @seamammalresearch.bsky.social for the photo!
Check the paper here: doi.org/10.1111/1365...

If they think bird science is the most toxic field in all of science, they’re in for a rude awakening

Harp seals spend a decent chunk of their time swimming on their back. It feels like it’s spiteful

And yet sometimes they seem to excel at making sure the antenna of their tag doesn’t get above water

California (along with a couple other states) has no legal sports betting, either online or at casinos, so it definitely is doable

Kicking off part 2 of our general and physiology session, Ellen L. Hayward dives into the cooperative "tail-slap" feeding dynamics and role specialization of herring-eating killer whales in Icelandic waters. 🐋🐟 #UKIRSC2026 @ellenlhayward.bsky.social

Eva-Maria S. Bønnelycke @eva-mariab.bsky.social explores how CO2 accumulation limits energy gain in freely diving grey seals, impacting their foraging efficiency. 🦭💨 #UKIRSC2026

is there some way I can quickly unlearn all of history so as to feel better about recent events

Back when I worked in pinniped stranding, cookie cutter shark bites wouldn’t even really justify a response

Is a Montane egg-eating snake posting this?

Scale-dependent foraging behaviour and habitat associations of two sympatric marine top predators - Landscape Ecology Context Theoretical research has considered how animals should optimise foraging strategies to maximise fitness, adapting search scale to exploit different habitats and minimise competition. Empirical...

New #OA paper in Landscape Ecology led by SMRU researchers @mattidcarter.bsky.social and @djfrussell.bsky.social reveals scale-dependent foraging behaviour and habitat associations of grey and harbour seals across the North Sea 🦭🧭 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

We are recruiting several PhD students. If you are interested in conservation conflicts, population ecology, quantitative ecology, or biodiversity, check these projects out (links in the thread, feel free to reach out):

Great talk by @izzylangley.bsky.social of @seamammalresearch.bsky.social at #BES2025 on intraguild predation and UK seal population trends. Check the paper here: doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Props to the folks at Vancouver Aquarium who disentangled him. Getting entangled sea lions was always such a struggle

ICYMI: Newly issued waivers allow hundreds of miles of new border infrastructure — including double walls, patrol roads, and industrial lighting — in the last open corridors for jaguars, ocelots and dozens of other animals moving between the U.S. and Mexico.

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press...

🦭 Last week, I presented our recent work on evaluating the risk of seals colliding with tidal turbines at @seamammalresearch.bsky.social, at the @mastscot.bsky.social conference.

If you’re interested in hearing more, read the preprint here: shorturl.at/76VSb !

The true cost of me doing my PhD on gray seals is that unsolicited gray seals facts are now about 20% of my personality

The reason aerial surveys works so well for gray seal pups is because the pups are completely white (it’s thought that they used to be ice seals), so they stand out super clearly against the rocks

Annual plug for the fabulous phylopic.org website with tens of thousands of easily searchable silhouette images for almost every life form imaginable. They make nice additions to your biology plots!

You think people might think finding another good candidate in a state of 1.4 million people would be easier and more palatable than trying to convince people that actually a nazi tattoo isn’t really that big of a deal

OSM being in Glasgow in February was certainly a choice though. Guessing the venue was cheap

Sea otter steals surfer’s board in Santa Cruz; woman uninjured Santa Cruz firefighters tell KSBW 8 that a sea otter took a woman’s surfboard around 5:07 p.m. and may have nipped at her, but did not break the skin. Firefighters pulled her to shore.

An otters’ favorite pastime. From the photo, it looks like the otter isn’t tagged. Otter 841 and some earlier miscreants had received some amount of human care, so it would be interesting if this is a completely wild water weasel thats getting in on the thieving.

www.ksbw.com/article/sea-...

Honestly it does seem kind of fun if you have the resources and take away the doomsday part. I wouldn’t mind having an everyday bunker