New Insights From Creatures' Perspective

Attaching the device to a massive whale is not always easy, as the mammals are wary of humans. Calambokidis and his fellow researchers relied on a small, fast boat that got them close enough to extend a 12-foot fishing pole, on which dangled a Crittercam with large suction cups. At first, they had only a 10 percent success rate attaching the recorders, but now they do better than 50 percent.

"It took us a while to have the proper approach technique," Calambokidis said, adding that the video and sound recording have greatly enhanced scientists' understanding of blue whale breeding behavior.

Even when scientists manage to attach the camera, there's no guarantee it will stay there.

Four years ago, Stewart Breck, a research wildlife biologist at the Agriculture Department's National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, Colo., attached a collar holding a Crittercam to a 200-pound, young adult black bear in Yosemite National Park for a study of how bears forage. Beck and his colleagues retrieved three hours of footage that showed the bear trying to break into campers' food lockers -- until the bear managed to pull the collar over its head and toss it away.

"It was a bear just notorious for being able to pull collars off," Breck said. "But they're not all like that."

Other animals have been more accommodating. Between 1995 and 2000, NOAA scientists deployed Crittercams on 44 endangered Hawaiian monk seals at French Frigate Shoals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and the footage has reshaped their understanding of how the seals feed.

After discovering that the seals feed on the deep slopes of the atoll rather than just in its shallow reefs, and that the animals can flip boulders over underwater to reach fish and other prey beneath, NOAA officials are rethinking how best to protect the seals' habitat.

Researchers have also used Crittercams to wage public relations campaigns aimed at humans. After capturing spectacular underwater footage by attaching cameras three dozen times to the backs of black sea turtles, Jeffrey A. Seminoff, an ecologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, held "movie nights" in the Mexican town of Bahia de los Angeles to persuade local residents not to eat the turtles.

"This is a community where you could drive down the street and smell turtles cooking in pots," Seminoff said. "We gave them a sea turtle eye's view of habitat that's outside their back yards. We had a campaign: each month, release one turtle. I think the Crittercam helped us achieve that."