Tracking

Telemetry — attaching electronic tags to marine animals and recovering the location and behavior data they record — has transformed our understanding of how ocean biodiversity is distributed in space and time. MBON’s tracking work is anchored in the BioTrack thematic node, which coordinates with NOAA’s Animal Telemetry Network (ATN).

Acoustic telemetry

Acoustic tags transmit coded pulses that are detected by underwater receiver arrays. Networks of receivers in estuaries, bays, and offshore waters can track tagged fish, sharks, and sea turtles over months to years, revealing migration corridors, seasonal habitat use, and site fidelity. The integrated ATN database holds hundreds of millions of detections from thousands of tagged animals.

Satellite telemetry

Platform Transmitter Terminals (PTTs) and GPS tags attached to air-breathing animals (sea turtles, marine mammals, seabirds) transmit location data via the Argos satellite system. This provides basin-scale movement data impossible to collect with fixed receivers.

Archival and biologging tags

Miniaturized data loggers record depth, temperature, light level, and acceleration at high frequency. Recovered from recaptured animals or dead-recovered individuals, archival tags reveal fine-scale diving behavior, foraging activity, and the thermal environments animals select — a window into physiology and prey availability.

Data infrastructure

BioTrack works with ATN, the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS), and the Movebank repository to ensure tracking data are FAIR — accessible to researchers globally and linkable to environmental layers from remote sensing and oceanographic models.