Macquarie Island southern elephant seal capture-mark-recapture data

The Southern Ocean has been disproportionately affected by climate change
and is therefore an ideal place to study the influence of changing
environmental conditions on ecosystems. Changes in the demography of
predator populations are indicators of broader shifts in food-web
structure, but long-term data are required to study these effects.
Southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) from Macquarie Island have
consistently decreased in population size while all other major
populations across the Southern Ocean have recently stabilised or are
increasing. Two long-term mark-recapture studies (1956-1967 and 1993-2009)
have monitored this population, which provides an opportunity to
investigate demographic performance over a range of climatic conditions.
This provides insights on individual vital rates of known-age seals from
Macquarie Island over extensively long timeseries.