Non-SEAL seals could help Navy ships — by a whisker

and erally feeling the landscape.”

Murphy discussed their work with Ash Carter, then the secretary of defense, when he visited Newport in May.

The warfare center receives funding from the Office of Naval Research for in-house laboratory indepen- dent research, including the whisker project. The budget is about $2.4 million annually, with each project typi- cally receiving $100,000 to $150,000 a year, according to the center.

The Navy, which is also funding bio-inspired work at universities, has taken a greater interest in the field in the past decade. Animals do things well that the Navy wants its underwater vehicles to do well, like the way they propel themselves through water and can stay put in the face of currents.

Scientists and engineers at the warfare center are studying a variety of creatures to borrow their best features for potential military appli- cations, from the maneuverability of a bat in flight to cica- das’ ability to transmit sound. One researcher is even trying to figure out how a sensor could float like a jellyfish.

The seal whiskers project shows “remarkable promise” for the Navy because a seal’s sensory capabilities are so specific and sensitive, said Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researcher Andrea Bogomolni, who leads the Northwest Atlantic Seal Research Consortium.

This month in the lab in Newport, Lapseritis and Murphy measured the motion of a harbor seal whisker in a tunnel of water as the speed of the flow changed. A cylinder in the tunnel disturbed the water flow like a swimming fish would.

They work with groups that respond to reports of distressed or deceased seals to collect whiskers from seals that die. They have run hundreds of trials with different whiskers and species, and have created a whisker with a 3-D printer. They haven’t set a timeline for finishing the project.