Tagging along

Researchers track large marine predators across the globe

Posted by Katy Balatero (Guest Contributor) at 9:35 AM on 22 Aug 2007

Read more about: oceans | wildlife | scientific research

I spent the spring and summer of 2002 studying at Hopkins Marine Station, in Pacific Grove, Calif. -- splashing around in tide pools, diving in kelp forests, and wading through mud in Elkhorn Slough. One of the highlights of my time there was helping Dr. Barbara Block and Dr. Dan Costa experiment with placing satellite tags on elephant seals. These seals can dive as deep as 1700 ft, spending up to 30 minutes underwater, so they were great test subjects to see how the tags would hold up.

After capturing a few seals on A�o Nuevo Island and trucking them an hour down the coast to Hopkins, the scientists glued the tags on and released them, tracking their progress as they swam back home.

Block and Costa are lead scientists in the Tagging of Pacific Predators project. The project is helping them to understand where migrating sharks, leatherback turtles, bluefin tuna, seals, albatross, and other large marine animals spend their time.

Not only do the tags track the animals' location, swim speed, and depth and duration of dives, but they also collect information about the temperature and salinity of the seawater, which is beamed back to the researchers via satellite. Fancy, eh?

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Yes, very fancy

The TOPP website is not as flexible as it could be, but still it has a lot of impressive stuff, including a description of the different kinds of tags that are used. They measure all kinds of things, and no doubt are tagged onto different kinds of animals going different ways, up and down and across.

Predators are certainly a great place to start, and the bluefin tuna and the leatherback turtle are terrific choices.

Surely data about any large shark would be interesting. That they have tagged one or more great white sharks (how many?) is obviously thrilling, but that should not make us forget that there are lots of kinds of sharks in the Pacific, and all are interesting.

The albatrosses have already been studied a bit, and there is no reason why they should not still be studied. But I wonder how their data, so different from those of the marine creatures, are supposed to add to the big picture.

Also, I wonder why cetaceans are not included. Too hard to round up and tag? OK, plus I gather the TOPP people are thus far limited to what they can accomplish off coastal California. Still, even though there are a lot of people doing good work with humpback whales and orcas and gray whales, there is still a lot we can learn about them. Also, there are many other cetaceans, about whom we know precious little.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 1:57 AM on 25 Aug 2007

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