Tracking Three-Dimensional Fish Behavior with a New Marine Acoustic Telemetry System

The persistent monitoring capability provided by acoustic telemetry systems allows us to study behavior, movement, and resource selection of mobile marine animals. Current marine acoustic telemetry systems are challenged by localization errors and limits in the number of animals that can be tracked simultaneously. We designed a new system to provide detection ranges of up to 1 km, to reduce localization errors to less than 1 m, and to increase to 500 the number of unique tags simultaneously tracked. The design builds on HTIs experience of more than a decade developing acoustic telemetry systems for freshwater environments. A field trial of the prototype system was conducted at the University of Washingtons Friday Harbor Marine Laboratory (Friday Harbor, WA). Copper rockfish (Sebastes caurinus) were selected for field trials of this new system because their high site-fidelity and small home ranges provide ample opportunity to track individual fish behavior while testing our ability to characterize the movements of a species of interest to management authorities.