Researchers from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society and the National Research Council of Argentina have recently witnessed a South American sea bird turning into a "superbird."
Researchers fitted a small camera on the back of an imperial cormorant in Punta León, a coastal area in Argentine Patagonia, and watched the sea bird diving 150 feet underwater in 40 seconds, searching for food on the vast ocean floor for 80 seconds and catching a snakelike fish before returning to the surface.
Punta León supports more than 3,500 pairs of imperial cormorants. This is the first time researchers captured the feeding techniques of these birds. The video will help researchers analyzing the birds' eating habits and thus protecting their feeding areas and environmental conditions to protect the cormorant population, said the ECS researchers.
The WCS scientific team, led by Dr. Flavio Quintana, has been studying the cormorants' feeding behavior for the past ten years. Using advanced technological tools like multi-channel archival tags and high resolution GPS-loggers. The team, till date, has tracked more than 400 sea birds in the region to identify priority feeding areas. The present team was joined by Dr. Carlos Zavalaga and Ken Yoda of University of Nogoya, Japan, to fit the camera on the bird.
Check out the video below:
