In winter of 2023, Dan and then PhD student Arina traveled to Kazakhstan, joined by Katie Prager, veterinary disease ecologist from UCLA, to spend 4 days on the Caspian Sea searching the ice for the endangered and endemic Caspian seals.
Dan Costa, Arina Favilla, and Katie Prager (from left to right) standing in front of the icebreaker on the Caspian Sea.
The Central Asian Institute for Environmental Research (CAIER), under the leadership of ecologist and founder Aselle Tasmagambetova, organized this expedition and invited Dr. Costa and colleagues to help collect new data to learn more about the ecology and health of this species that’s been declining and experiencing sporadic die-offs.
We successfully deployed satellite tags on 6 adult female Caspian seals to track their movement and diving/haulout behavior. The adult females we were ~1.1-1.2 m long and weighed ~60-70 kg.
Adult female Caspian Seal with a Wildlife Computers tag on its back.
The satellite tags transmitted for an average of 25 days (15.7-37.0 days). Check out the tracks of all the seals below:
We also collected blood and milk samples to obtain basic hematology and composition values for the species. We also took swabs to perform health assessments of adult females and pups.
Aselle Tasmagambetova takes a nasal swab from a pup (left). A blood sample is collected from an adult female (below).
We are currently analyzing the biological samples. We hope this data will shed some light on their current health status, because as Aselle remarked, their health “is a marker of the ecological well-being of the entire Caspian region.”
During our trip, we also got to visit the Caspian Seal Research and Rehabilitation Center located in Aktau, where they have been working to increase protections for Caspian seals, conduct research on the changing conditions in the Caspian Sea, monitor the Caspian seal population, and rehabilitate sick and injured seals. Learn more about their work and previous expeditions here.
