Seminars

Seminar Abstract

The world acoustic tracking initiative - OSTAPA

The Census of Marine Life's Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking project (www.postcoml.org) has just completed the second year of its two-year demonstration phase, with 120 km of 'listening curtains' stretching from the Columbia River to the top of the Alaska panhandle. Over 2,700 salmon from 19 US and Canadian stocks in 16 river systems were tracked. The detection rate for individually tagged salmon migrating over the individual lines in the system was 96%, revealing substantial differences in the paths, speeds, distributions and survival of juvenile salmon after they leave their home rivers and swim out into the ocean. The key components in the POST system are tiny tags that can be surgically implanted in animals as small as 20 g, providing over a million unique codes, and VR3 receivers with sufficient power to last up to seven years that can upload data to the surface via an acoustic modem and can record and transmit data from physical sensors as well as tag codes. They create a key link between biological, chemical and physical data for GOOS. Excitement over the POST deployment on the West Coast of North America generated an even larger scale expansion project called the Ocean Shelf Tracking and Physics Array (OSTAPA) that would put VR3 curtains in every ocean. Starting with a workshop at the Australian Marine Science Association meeting in Hobart in 2004, OSTAPA proponents have met in Halifax, Frankfurt and Catalina, formed consortia in Australia, South Africa and the Arctic, and are developing proposals for the Atlantic Salmon Federation, the European 7th Framework and the US Pacific Coast Ocean Observing System (PaCOOS). Over 6000 receivers are already in place around the world, tracking over 100 different species.

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CSIRO = Marine Laboratories Auditorium, Castray Esplanade, Hobart

For further information, or to schedule a seminar, contact:
Karen Wild-Allen, (Oceanographic seminars) CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (03) 6232 5010
Piers Dunstan, (Biological seminars) CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (03) 6232 5382
Sandra Zicus, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC (03) 6226 7888 & Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies (IASOS) University of Tasmania (03) 6226 2509