Building partnerships to better understand marine species on the move.
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Acoustic Telemetry Node in the Northeast Pacific

  • Tags on animals emit an ultrasonic ping that is detectable by underwater hydrophones called receivers.
  • Many species can move surprisingly far from where they were tagged and the receiver arrays at original study sites, especially as large-scale climatic events begin to force them to search for new, suitable habitat.
  • Making an official telemetry data sharing network along the Northeast Pacific and Alaska will enhance the ability of researchers to track animals across longer ranges and understand habitat requirements at a larger scale.

What N-PAcT Does

  • Extend individual researchers’ receiver network from local to coast-wide, across international and other jurisdictional boundaries.
  • Serve as additional data backup for researchers submitting data to the node.
  • Allow detection matching across regions and oceans through compatibility with other Ocean Tracking Network (OTN) data sharing nodes.
  • Securely store data on IOOS servers managed by dedicated node manager and fulfill data integrity and longevity requirements of grant funding.
  • Perform data QA/QC by node staff and assist researchers in retrieving detections of their tagged animals from across N-PAcT and other regional nodes.
  • Seek out sustained funding to maintain operability over the long term to effectively store and distribute data to users.

Tracking Changes in the Ocean

  • California Current Large Marine Ecosystem (CCLME) has a long history of shifts in environmental conditions due to PDO, El Niño, and acute temperature stressors.
  • The Large Marine Ecosystems in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea are experiencing some of the more drastic changes in ocean temperature and other oceanographic conditions in the world.
  • These environmental changes will alter the distribution of resources (e.g. thermal limits, food) and mobile species will shift their movement and habitat use patterns accordingly.
  • Without a dedicated network to compile and archive animal movement data, resource managers will be ill-equipped to effectively manage mobile populations.

Following the Data

Below is a diagram that illustrates the data flow from individual researcher submitting data to N-PAcT to receiving matched detections of their animals on other receivers.

Real-Time Telemetry in Every Sanctuary: A Long-Term Vision

In contrast to current receivers that must be manually downloaded by divers, new advances in telemetry have near-real time buoy packages that report out when tagged individuals are present nearby. These buoy packages also report relevant ocean conditions like temperature. This real-time data is useful in a number of contexts including ocean safety, understanding acute climate impacts, and quantifying ecologically abnormal events. Real-time data could be ported through IOOS infrastructure and made publicly viewable.

Sanctuaries are ideal places to locate this infrastructure that will hopefully spur additional telemetry research to better understand these species and the habitats they use. ATN and ONMS have a long-term vision to get this infrastructure in every sanctuary. Staff are scoping ways forward to make this vision a reality to bring these data streams to sanctuaries, local researchers and the communities they serve.

Photo Caption: 
An acoustic receiver being deployed in southern California.
Photo by Ryan Logan.

An acoustic receiver being deployed in southern California. Photo by Ryan Logan.