A float-release package for recovering data-loggers from wild sharks

Whitmore, B.M., White, C.F., Gleiss, A.C. and Whitney, N.M. (2016) A float-release package for recovering data-loggers from wild sharks. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 475 . pp. 49-53.

Abstract

The rapidly expanding use of high-resolution data-loggers to study marine vertebrates presents a wealth of new opportunities for understanding the behavior, physiology, and ecology of these animals in situ. It also presents a number of new logistical challenges, one of the biggest of which is the need to physically recover the tag in order to acquire data, thus, a novel data-logger release and recovery package was designed and tested. This package consisted of a microsphere-resin float, very high frequency (VHF) transmitter, and galvanic timed release (GTR) device which allowed acceleration data logger (ADL) tags to remain on free-living sharks for several days before detaching from the fin. Upon release, tags floated to the surface and were located using a VHF receiver and yagi antenna. This method has been used successfully on blacktip, bull, nurse, and white sharks to produce an overall recovery rate of 95.7% on 47 deployments over periods of 1–111 h and shark displacement distances up to 35 km. This represents a cost-effective method for recovering data-loggers from sharks and large teleosts.

Publication Type:	Journal Article
Murdoch Affiliation:	Centre for Fish and Fisheries Research School of Veterinary and Life Sciences
Publisher:	Elsevier BV
Copyright:	© 2015 Elsevier B.V.
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/29534

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