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| Edited By: |Source: AFP |Updated: Dec 13, 2017, 01:30 AM IST
OTTAWA: Researchers will launch a landmark project in Canada to track the world’s fish stocks and marine mammals using electronic tags akin to UPC codes used by retailers to trace their inventories.
The project, called the Ocean Tracking Network, aims to collect data on sea creatures’ migrations using microchips that vary in size from a peanut to an AA battery embedded in salmon, whales, polar bears, penguins and others.
The inexpensive devices would transmit information about their travels, as well as water temperatures, salinity and even light conditions at various depths and locations, as they pass through an extensive international array of acoustic receivers on the sea floor, or via satellites when they surface, or when they are recaptured.
“Today we know less about our marine life — how these animals live, where they go — than we know about the back side of the moon,” said project leader Ron O’Dor in a statement.
The information collected may be used by authorities to decide when fisheries should be open or closed to conserve endangered stocks, and to provide insights into how animal behaviours change should ocean waters continue to warm, he said. “All the errors made in the past in managing fish stocks were made because we did not fully understand that fish stocks migrate,” O’Dor said.
New technologies will allow tracking for up to 20 years, he said. An initial array of acoustic receivers is expected to be set up soon in Prince William Sound on Canada's west coast to track salmon sharks in the northern Gulf of Alaska region, conference organisers said. Later, it will be expanded to span 14 regions in the Arctic and Southern Oceans, the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific.
