Koh, Isabella

English

Andrews University

Andrews University Digital Commons @ Andrews University Lake Union Herald Lake Union Herald 6-2023 National Geographic Explorer Returns from Research in Brazil Isabella Koh Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/luh-pubs Visit LakeUnionHerald.org |  JUNE/JULY 2023  |  33NEWS  / EDUCATIONGonzalez-Socoloske, who specializes in mammal ecology and conservation, spent five months at several locations along the Amazon, analyzing species interactions and participat-ing in preservation efforts.“I’m specifically interested in how species are adapted to the various environments that they live in and how they modify those adapta-tions when there are human induced changes to those environments,” he said. “One of the principal aspects of understanding species ecology is to know where they are and how many there are. Some of these basic questions are really challenging with certain species. Manatees can be very cryptic, particularly Amazonian manatees, where their habitat is almost entirely dark water. This makes study-ing them really, really difficult.”National Geographic Explorer Returns from Research in BrazilIn 2020, Gonzalez-Socoloske –was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award for his re-search project, “Can sonar technol-ogy aid in the detection and moni-toring of the Vulnerable Amazonian manatee?” In 2022, he became a National Geographic Scholar, re-ceiving a grant to fund the updated project, “Surveying Sirenians with Sonar: Using modern technology and traditional knowledge to count Amazonian manatees.” He said, “It was a huge honor. They’re both related to my sabbatical period, where I was able to go to Brazil and spend an extended period of time working on this specific project.”He traveled to the research location in May 2022, where he met and collaborated with several other researchers, including Miriam Marmontel, specialist in Brazilian aquat-ic mammals; Gordon Hastie, principal re-search fellow at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland; and Jason Gulley, geologist at South Florida University and professional freelance photographer. Over the span of his stay, he also incorporated local hunters onto the team as an alternative manatee detection form.In past research projects, Gonzalez-Socoloske has experimented with side-scan sonar for manatee detection, but this new project utilized a new kind of device: multi-beam sonar. “It’s much more expensive, more technical, but allows us to detect movement. Now we’re seeing a video rather than a still image, which changes the game entirely,” he notes. “I was able to capture the first record-ings of Amazonian manatees swimming in their natural environment. We’re really excited about that journey.” The advanced technology operates at fre-quencies well above the hearing range of the animals, keeping them safe, and opens up the possibility of studying interactions between the manatees and their environments.With this new strategy, Gonzalez-Socoloske and his team can manually detect manatees in both semi-captive and purely wild habitats. The next step of their project involves creating an algorithm that can register manatee signa-tures, so that the collected data can be ana-lyzed through an auto-detection feature. The algorithm will be based on an ex-isting program created at the University of St. Andrews that is currently used to iden-tify seals. Once that has been completed, Gonzalez-Socoloske explained, “to scale this up, the idea is to have multiples of the sonar setup in key locations where we know animals are coming through at a particular time in their life cycle. We can take advantage of that to try to count them.” Species protection efforts rely on the cre-ation of a standardized quantification sys-tem—something that does not yet exist for the Amazonian manatee. Gonzalez-Socoloske said, “We can’t protect something when we cannot ultimately say that their numbers are decreasing or stable or increasing.” The find-ings from this project are the first stage in cre-ating a standard system and setting up official measures for their protection. “It’s a huge step forward in terms of the conservation of the species,” he says, “because it will start giving us a clearer picture of how many there are. It provides managers with a tool to address pop-ulational changes in real time.”PIsabella Koh is a University Communication student writer. DANIEL GONZALEZ-SOCOLOSKE, PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY AT ANDREWS UNIVERSITY, RECENTLY COMPLETED AN EXTENDED RESEARCH TRIP TO THE AMAZON BASIN OF BRAZIL, WHERE HE STUDIED ALTERNATIVE DETECTION TECHNIQUES FOR AMAZONIAN MANATEES. Courtesy of Daniel Gonzalez-SocoloskeE Daniel Gonzalez-Socoloske recovers a manatee skull with the aid of local hunters in the Amanã Sustainable Development Reserve, state of Amazonas, Brazil. 

National Geographic Explorer Returns from Research in Brazil

https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2116&context=luh-pubs

National Geographic Explorer Returns from Research in Brazil

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Andrews University