An international group of scientists have recruited a team of unlikely research assistants to help them study the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica – elephant seals. Boldly going where current buoys, satellites and ships cannot, the intrepid fieldworkers will help to fill blind spots in our knowledge of this most inaccessible of oceans.

Our knowledge of the effects of climate change at the planet’s poles is heavily skewed towards the Arctic. There, it’s clear that the sea-ice cover is gradually shrinking. But at the opposite end of the world, in Antarctica, data is harder to come by. The Southern Ocean plays a vital role in exchanging heat between the atmosphere and surrounding oceans, and it’s too important an area to know