Animal-borne telemetry: an integral component of the ocean observing toolkit

Rob Harcourt*, Ana M.M. Sequeira, Xuelei Zhang, Fabien Roquet, Kosei Komatsu, Michelle Heupel, Clive McMahon, Fred Whoriskey, Mark Meekan, Gemma Carroll, Stephanie Brodie, Colin Simpfendorfer, Mark Hindell, Ian Jonsen, Daniel P. Costa, Barbara Block, Mônica Muelbert, Bill Woodward, Mike Weise, Kim AarestrupMartin Biuw, Lars Boehme, Steven J. Bograd, Dorian Cazau, Jean Benoit Charrassin, Steven J. Cooke, Paul Cowley, P. J. Nico de Bruyn, Tiphaine Jeanniard du Dot, Carlos Duarte, Víctor M. Eguíluz, Luciana C. Ferreira, Juan Fernández-Gracia, Kimberly Goetz, Yusuke Goto, Christophe Guinet, Mike Hammill, Graeme C. Hays, Elliott L. Hazen, Luis A. Hückstädt, Charlie Huveneers, Sara Iverson, Saifullah Arifin Jaaman, Kongkiat Kittiwattanawong, Kit M. Kovacs, Christian Lydersen, Tim Moltmann, Masaru Naruoka, Lachlan Phillips, Baptiste Picard, Nuno Queiroz, Gilles Reverdin, Katsufumi Sato, David W. Sims, Eva B. Thorstad, Michele Thums, Anne M. Treasure, Andrew W. Trites, Guy D. Williams, Yoshinari Yonehara, Mike A. Fedak

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

    140 Citations (Scopus)
    88 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    Animal telemetry is a powerful tool for observing marine animals and the physical environments that they inhabit, from coastal and continental shelf ecosystems to polar seas and open oceans. Satellite-linked biologgers and networks of acoustic receivers allow animals to be reliably monitored over scales of tens of meters to thousands of kilometers, giving insight into their habitat use, home range size, the phenology of migratory patterns and the biotic and abiotic factors that drive their distributions. Furthermore, physical environmental variables can be collected using animals as autonomous sampling platforms, increasing spatial and temporal coverage of global oceanographic observation systems. The use of animal telemetry, therefore, has the capacity to provide measures from a suite of essential ocean variables (EOVs) for improved monitoring of Earth's oceans. Here we outline the design features of animal telemetry systems, describe current applications and their benefits and challenges, and discuss future directions. We describe new analytical techniques that improve our ability to not only quantify animal movements but to also provide a powerful framework for comparative studies across taxa. We discuss the application of animal telemetry and its capacity to collect biotic and abiotic data, how the data collected can be incorporated into ocean observing systems, and the role these data can play in improved ocean management.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number326
    Pages (from-to)1-21
    Number of pages21
    JournalFrontiers in Marine Science
    Volume6
    Issue numberJUN
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 26 Jun 2019

    Bibliographical note

    Copyright the Author(s) 2019. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

    Keywords

    • ocean observing
    • animal telemetry
    • animal movement
    • movement analysis
    • EOV

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