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This story is from the category Sensors
Date posted: 20/10/2009 Birds, turtles and seals have all had their private lives pried into using GPS tags; now fish are getting the same Big Brother treatment. Until now it has been difficult to track fish with any accuracy. Large fish like tuna have been tracked before, but only with tags that communicate with Argos environmental monitoring satellites, which are accurate to a couple of hundred metres at best. Traditional GPS tags narrow the range to tens of metres, but are slow to get a satellite fix, a problem in tough ocean conditions and when an animal surfaces only briefly. The tags attached to sunfish, Mola mola, by David Sims and colleagues at the UK Marine Biological Association in Plymouth use a system called Fastloc GPS to get a location almost instantly. The tags can track fish for long periods because a salt-water switch ensures the power-hungry GPS only switches on when the fish nears the surface. The tags are towed 1.5 metres behind the fish, via a tether attached to its dorsal fin. See the full Story via external site: www.newscientist.com Most recent stories in this category (Sensors): 28/02/2017: DJI drones use plane avoidance tech |
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