Content area
Full Text
TAGGING AND TRACKING OF MARINE ANIMALS WITH ELECTRONIC DEVICES.Editors: J. L. Nielsen, H. Arrizabalaga, N. Fragoso, A. Hobday, M. Lutcavage, & J. Sibert. Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York, 2009. ISBN 978-1-4020-9639-6, 452 pp.
Separate conferences tend to be held for marine mammals versus other aquatic animals. Although this keeps the conferences to a manageable size, there is a risk that methods (and mistakes) get re-invented in each community, wasting time and effort. Given the interrelatedness of fisheries and marine mammal conservation issues, there may be a lot of benefit in an active dialogue between these fields. However, when it comes to tag technology, there are some good reasons why work on marine mammals and other aquatic animals has diverged, and this book is a great primer for those who haven't been keeping up with what's being done with the "less-charismatic" animals (to borrow a term from the Preface). The book is a collection of 25 papers submitted by attendees of the 2nd International Tagging and Tracking Symposium held in Spain in late 2007. The conference's focus was on the application of biotelemetry methods in fisheries science and followed an earlier conference in 2000 in Hawaii.
In tagging, we usually want to learn where an animal goes and what it does. Depending on the study question, more emphasis might be placed on the former or the latter information, but learning something about the track taken by an animal is a fundamental reason to tag. The methods available to track animals depend a lot on behavior. Tags for obligate (and unquestionably charismatic) air breathers can use radio signals to track or geolocate the animal and to transmit data, taking advantage of frequent surfacings. The long range of radio transmissions means that fairly accurate positions can be obtained anywhere in the world whether by tag transmissions to Argos satellites or cell phone networks, or by reception of GPS signals on the tag. Thus, there are existing global infrastructures that can be used to track tags on marine mammals, albeit with many restrictions that we would love to overcome.
In comparison, numerous species of aquatic animals surface infrequently, if at all, and this dictates a fundamentally different approach to animal tracking and tag design. Two methods are widely...