Marine scientists warn human safety, prosperity depend on better ocean observ...(ntaining tens of thousands of fish and s...)

Tags

As part of the international Census of Marine Life (CoML), approximately 2,000 marine animals that journey into the open, deep ocean have been tagged by project TOPP (Tagging of Pacific Palagics), creating a team of animal oceanographers that reveal biodiversity hotspots, nurseries, and migratory routes that need protection and also describe the physical state of the areas of the oceans the animals inhabit.

The 22 species tagged include elephant seals, white sharks, leatherback turtles, squid, albatross and sooty shearwaters. (To see a video of tags at work: http://biology.st-andrews.ac.uk/seaos/movies/seaos_withVO.mpg).

Light, depth, temperature and salinity data captured by the tags are transmitted via satellite as the creatures travel. Elephant seals, for example, spend 10 months at sea and dive up to 1.5 km below the ocean surface.

Acoustic tags deployed by another CoML project, POST (Pacific Ocean Salmon Tracking), allows researchers to follow animals that stay on the shallow continental shelves, such as salmon and sturgeon, as correspondents, creating insights into their migration and survival where and why they die that suggest better strategies for sustainable fisheries. Over 12,000 POST-coded acoustic tags have been released over the POST array, resulting in more than 4 million detections of the movements and survival of the tagged animals.

CoML Chief Scientist Ron ODor says the endorsement and support of ministers in Cape Town is being urged for the Ocean Tracking Network, recently created to expand use of these techniques into a continuous worldwide system.

CoML experts also want GEO ministers to endorse standard protocols to gove
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