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Abstract Marine animals equipped with sensors provide vital information for understanding their ecophysiology and collect oceanographic data on climate change and for resource management. Existing methods for attaching sensors to marine animals mostly rely on invasive physical anchors, suction cups, and rigid glues. These methods can suffer from limitations, particularly for adhering to soft fragile marine species such as squid and jellyfish, including slow complex operations, unreliable fixation, tissue trauma, and behavior changes of the animals. However, soft fragile marine species constitute a significant portion of ocean biomass (>38.3 teragrams of carbon) and global commercial fisheries. Here we introduce a soft hydrogel-based bioadhesive interface for marine sensors that can provide rapid (time <22 s), robust (interfacial toughness >160 J m−2), and non-invasive adhesion on various marine animals. Reliable and rapid adhesion enables large-scale, multi-animal sensor deployments to study biomechanics, collective behaviors, interspecific interactions, and concurrent multi-species activity. These findings provide a promising method to expand a burgeoning research field of marine bio-sensing from large marine mammals and fishes to small, soft, and fragile marine animals.
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All Aboard! Behind the Scenes of a Scientific Research Cruise
From our climate to the air we breathe, the ocean influences the world around us. Scientists are always looking for new ways to explore and study the ocean. One way we do this is by going on specially designed ships that allow us to study the deep sea, far from land. On our latest expedition aboard the Research Vessel Sally Ride, we went out 300 miles into the North Pacific Ocean for a week. We used some of the most important ocean science tools to catch tiny marine animals, collect water from some of the deepest depths, uncover mysteries of oceans past, and study how desert dust feeds marine animals today.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2126668
- PAR ID:
- 10584107
- Publisher / Repository:
- Frontiers for Young Minds
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers for Young Minds
- Volume:
- 11
- ISSN:
- 2296-6846
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3389/frym.2023.1184073
