Relating diving behavior and antioxidant status: Insights from oxidative stress biomarkers in the blood of two distinct divers, Mirounga leonina and Arctocephalus australis

Pinnipeds rely upon diving to perform essential activities, including foraging. As pulmonated animals, oxygen privation experienced during submergence represents a considerable challenge both physiologically and biochemically. Routine exposure to hypoxia and the rapid transitions between ischemia/reperfusion of tissues leads to extremely high reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, which must be opposed by antioxidant defenses to avoid oxidative stress. The diving behaviors and capabilities of pinnipeds are very diverse, resulting in distinct metabolic responses among species. To assess whether these characteristics reflect the antioxidant status of two marine diving mammals with distinct diving capacities, oxidative stress biomarkers were measured in the blood of Arctocephalus australis (n = 11) and Mirounga leonina (n = 12). All of the biomarkers analyzed in M. leonina were significantly higher than those of A. australis, suggesting that higher antioxidant content is needed to counteract the high ROS production associated with the long submergence times (24.3 ± 5.6 min) of this species, which are nearly ten times greater than those of A. australis (2.8 ± 0.5 min). Thus, the constitutive antioxidant defenses of both species are of distinct magnitudes due to their inherent diving capacity.