Satellite Tracking for Wildlife Conservation

     This is my first blog ever, so here goes!  I chose to write this blog for a technology profile report assignment for Miami University's Biology in the Age of Technology Course.  I will be sharing here what I learned about satellite tracking, how it is used for wildlife conservation, and what challenges satellite tracking still faces as it continues to be a useful technology for wildlife conservation.

     Why use Satellite Tracking in Wildlife Conservation?

     Knowledge of the natural history of a particular species is imperative in order to best assist in their conservation.  The natural history of a species includes many factors such as: geographical distribution, habitat and range, migration patterns (if applicable), life span, eating patterns, and social, mating, and parenting behaviors.  In my opinion, the optimal way of learning about these factors is direct observation in natural habitats. 

     Since I have not had the opportunity to do field observations of wildlife, they certainly capture my wild and adventurous imagination.  Nothing beats creeping for hours quietly through the forest to track an elusive animal and finally being rewarded by spotting and observing the animal in all of its glory.  However, data about certain factors such as range and migration patterns are much more difficult to obtain through direct observation.  This is where satellite tracking is very useful.

     What is Satellite Tracking?

 

     Satellite tracking is the use of an orbiting satellite to receive information from a transmitter.  Transmitters, or PTTs - Platform Terminal Transmitters, are designed to be attached to the tracking object of interest, such as an animal or weather balloon.  The data is processed by a receiving station and a processing center.  The information is then available to users with a computer and internet access. 



Brief History of ARGOS Satellite Tracking

     Let's step back a bit to get a brief history of satellite tracking.  Satellite tracking in the U.S. started in the early 1970s when NASA began to look for ways that the 1950s space satellite systems could be used for purposes on Earth such as weather monitoring and ocean currents. (French, 1994).  The ARGOS system, the main satellite tracking system used primarily for environmental applications, was invented in 1978 by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales) of France.  It was used primarily by meteorologists and oceanographers to track respectively, weather patterns and ocean current patterns (to name only a couple data parameters) (Benson, 2012).  The data that they needed required accuracy, reliability, and standardization. 

     Biologists were interested in using the system to track wildlife, but at the time, the tags were not designed to be attached to a moving animal, but only to non-living subjects such as weather balloons and ocean buoys (Benson, 2012).  Biologists' needs would require the ARGOS system to be less reliable, more flexible, and would require that the PPTs be much smaller and be able to adapt to the ever-changing movements of land and marine animals.  The administration of the ARGOS system was hesitant to compromise the accuracy and reliability of the system to suit the needs of biologists.  However, after 1986, the use of the ARGOS system became partly commercialized.  PTTs were designed to suit the needs of biology tracking.  In 1988, 100 wildlife PTTs were in use, which was about 10-15% of the total number of PTTs in use (Benson, 2012).

Use of Satellite Tracking for Wildlife Conservation

     
     Satellite tracking can be used for many aspects of wildlife conservation.  Satellite tracking is particularly useful for understanding the movement patterns of species that travel long distances and understanding the migration patterns of birds and marine animals.  For example, transmitter tags were  used for determining the geographic locations and ocean depths at which whale sharks swam, off of the coast of South Africa in the Indian Ocean and by Honduras in the Caribbean Sea (Gifford, Compagno, Levine, and Antoniou, 2007).  Researchers learned of a previously unknown stopover location of migrating arctic terns after 1.4 g transmitters were attached to plastic leg rings on 50 arctic terns (Egevang, Stenhouse, Phillips, Petersen, Fox, and Silk, 2010).  Since little was known of the migratory behavior of male loggerhead turtles in open ocean waters, Hatase, Matsuzawa Sakamoto, Baba, and Miyawaki, 2002, tracked a male loggerhead turtle who was initially caught in a fishing net.  Emperor penguins were tracked in the Southern Ocean to determine how their foraging behavior was affected by certain oceanographic features (Scheffer, Trathan, and Collins, 2010).

     Satellite tracking can also be used to assist with understanding disease transmission from wildlife to humans.  Satellite transmitters were attached to sixteen wild waterfowl in Bangladesh to learn about transmission of the H5N1 virus, commonly known as the bird flu virus (Gewin, 2010).

Challenges of Satellite Tracking

     It is exciting to learn of the many uses of satellite tracking for the sake of wildlife conservation.  It is important to realize that the successful use of the technology is due to overcoming unique challenges.  The transmitters attached to the animal should not cause pain or hinder the animal's movements and usual behavior.  Gifford, et al, attached the transmitter on the end of a tether cable, which was attached to a steel anchor that was inserted into the whale sharks. They learned that care must be taken to ensure that the tether cables do not get entangled when the shark is underwater, which could endanger the animal.  Transmitters must be small, light-weight, and durable, especially for smaller birds.

     Hays, Bradshaw, Lovell, and Sims, 2007, determined that the following factors caused Argos satellite transmitters to stop transmitting on turtles, fish, and marine mammals: exhaustion of batteries, salt-water switch failure, antenna breakage, animal mortality and premature detachment of tags.

References

Benson, E.  2012.  One infrastructure, many global visions: the commercialization and diversification of Argos, a satellite-based environmental surveillance system.  Social Studies of Science, 42(6), 843-868.   

Egevang, C., Stenhouse, I. J., Phillips, R. A., Petersen, A., Fox, J. W., and Silk, J. R. D.  2010.  Tracking of Arctic terns Sternal paradisaea reveals longest animal migration.  PNAS, 107(5), 2078-2081.  

French, J.  1994.  Wildlife telemetry by satellite.  Elsevier Science, 18(1), 32-37.

Gewin, V.  2010.  Satellite tracking wildlife to predict emerging diseases.  Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.  8(5), 231.

Gifford, A, Compagno, L. J. V., Levine, M., Antoniou, A.   2007.  Satellite tracking of whale sharks using tethered tags.  Fisheries Research.  84, 17-24.

Hatase, H., Matsuzawa, Y., Sakamoto, W., Baba, N., Miyawaki, I.  2002.  Pelagic habitat use of an adult Japanese male loggerhead turtle Caretta caretta examined by the Argos satellite system.  Fisheries Science, 68, 945-947.

Hays, G.C., Bradshaw, C. J. A., James, M. C., Lovell, P., Sims, D. W.  2007.  Why do Argos satellite tags deployed on marine animals stop transmitting?  Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 349, 52-60.

Sheffer, A., Trathan, P. N., Collins, M.  2010.  Foraging behavior of King Penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) in relation to predictable mesoscale oceanographic features in the Polar Front Zone to the north of South Georgia.  Progress in Oceanography, 86, 232-245.