Summary:
As you watch the video, listen to what Tracey has to say about the way in which her career path has changed from what she expected it to be when she was at high school.
Captions:
Student:When you left high school was the career path you anticipated the same as the one that eventuated?
Dr Tracey Rogers:Absolutely not. I had when I left high school I thought I’d probably end up at Fisheries
and be a Fisheries scientist or work on marine toxins, something that was invertebrates,
so it’s all in the marine science realm I suppose. But I’ve ended up working on the Antarctic
on leopard seals and elephant seals so it’s, yeah, it’s completely different.
Summary:
As you watch the video, listen to what Tracey has to say about:
Captions:
Student:What drew you to study leopard seals more than other types of seals?
Dr Tracey Rogers:Why I studied leopard seals was really an accident. I got a job at the zoo as a seal trainer.
I was supposed to be doing the seal shows and it was meant to be like a between time job while
I worked out what I wanted to do for my PhD and which was going to be on invertebrates,
probably marine toxin type things and while doing the seal shows,
I was pretty bad at it, I was absolutely terrible.
And so I got fired from doing seal shows and the, I was given the other seals to look after
and the other seals were the leopard seals and elephant seals.
And so, while I was starting to work with the leopard seals I tried to find out everything I could about them
and there was absolutely nothing about them so that’s how my PhD developed.
So, it was really a complete and utter accident that I picked them
and the seal that I really cared about the most this one seal, her name is Astrid.
She was this big, huge female and she at Christmas time the females actually they’ll sing
when they’re in estrus, they sing for about three or four days.
I was back at the zoo at a Christmas party and I could hear this amazing sound in the air
and I went up to the pool to see what it was, it sounded like a bird actually, not like a seal,
and I realised it was actually her singing because usually in mammals
it’s the boys that do all the exciting things, not girls.
So it was very interesting that a female seal was here displaying
and so that’s really how my interest in leopard seals started.
Summary:
Listen to what Tracey says about:
Captions:
Climate change has had an impact on most, if not all of the inhabitants on earth.
So, what’s the impact they have had on seals?
Dr Tracey Rogers:Well the impact on seals in the area we work is huge. The leopard seal is a pack ice seal
and so they use the pack ice to give birth to their pups and to you know raise them.
And what’s happening on the western Antarctic Peninsula is the sea ice is disappearing and so that’s where their
nursery grounds for their pups so what we’ve been doing is looking at how the changes in the sea ice
are going to impact upon the seals and also a major dietary component for the seals are krill.
And the krill are tied to the sea ice as well and so the loss of the sea ice is then
trickling down to a loss of krill which is then impacting the seals as well.
Student:So part of the food chain?
Dr Tracey Rogers:Yep, completely part of the food chain so from lots of different angles it’s
impacting on not just the seals but the whole ecosystem.
Summary:
As you watch the video, listen to what Tracey has to say about how we can all have a positive impact by making simple practical changes in our life to combat climate change.
Captions:
Student:So what do we need to do to restore the balance?
Dr Tracey Rogers:What we need to do to restore the balance? A lot.
We need to really rack back all sorts of energy use; carbon emission, methane emission
all sorts of greenhouse gases and I think we all know what we need to do.
It’s actually doing it is the big thing we need to happen. So research like mine
and other researchers who work in with our program are really showing to the community this is a real event,
this is a major event where you see a whole ecosystem crashing basically and then it shows people
yeah look: walk to school, don’t, don’t get your mum to drive you, those simple sorts of things.
Use energy efficient lighting, and short showers and renewable energies.
We all know what to do, it’s basically doing it.
Student:It’s applying it.
Dr Tracey Rogers:Yeah.
Summary:
As you watch the video, listen to what Tracey has to say about working with large predators and the methods used to collect data.
Captions:
As a researcher,is there a fine line between monitoring the sea life,
such as dolphins, whales and seals and being invasive?
Dr Tracey Rogers:Ah, that’s a really good question. The work that we do in working with a six hundred kilogram
female leopard seal who was predatory who’ll eat other seals that are about two hundred kilograms
that we have to worry about them is basically eating you, potentially if you’re a young woman, like yourself.
And so we need to dart the animals and sedate them and so we have to be really careful with
the sedation procedure because you can lose animals under sedation very, very easily
and so yeah in needing to collect all the research work there’s also that other side of the
animal welfare impact upon the animals and that’s sort of a, really delicate balance.
Summary:
As you watch the video, listen to what Tracey has to say about choosing a science career and following your passion.
Captions:
Student:Was there a particular teacher or mentor who influenced you into choosing this career path?
Dr Tracey Rogers:There were a number of teachers when I went through who influenced me but their influence was to say
don’t study marine science. Study medicine or law. And you’ll never get a job as a marine scientist
and you shouldn’t go and study marine biology. And basically I ignored all of them and went
and studied marine biology because it was something that really interested me.
And that, I think that following your passion is critically important, if you do something
that you really like and really want to do, you’ll do really well at it.
Whereas I think I would have been a really dud GP.
Student:O.k. So it’s passion all the way?
Student:It’s passion all the way. So you need to be an optometrist. (laughs)