Satellite Monitoring: The SHARC Tagging System in Action
In a captivating presentation to the Bristol Underwater Photography Group, Peter de Maagt, an accomplished underwater photographer and antenna specialist for the European Space Agency (ESA), discussed the challenges and solutions in developing satellite tags for marine conservation.
De Maagt joined a group of scientists in the Dutch Antilles to perform field studies, focusing on a protected area near Saba, a sizable area where sharks thrive. The ESA is sensitive to environmental issues, particularly marine conservation, but faces numerous challenges in this area.
One of the main challenges is the harsh marine environment. Tags must be robust to survive saltwater corrosion, pressure, and impact. Miniaturization is another key issue, as tags need to be small and lightweight to avoid affecting the animal’s behavior. Energy efficiency is crucial for long battery life to collect sufficient data over time. Reliable satellite communication is needed despite animals being underwater much of the time. Lastly, cost constraints necessitate tags that are affordable for large-scale deployment in conservation projects.
To address these challenges, solutions include using advanced materials and waterproofing techniques to ensure durability. Developing low-power electronics and energy harvesting methods to extend battery life is another approach. Employing innovative data compression and transmission protocols optimized for intermittent connectivity is also essential. Collaborating with marine biologists to design tags that minimally impact the animals is another critical aspect.
ESA's tags have key properties such as smaller and lower weight, longer battery life, increased memory, and bi-directional communication with the satellite. An innovative project using the same chips is AIS, which can detect illegal fishing activities in protected areas by cross-referencing albatross data with fishing vessel data. Each biologist on the boat had a specific task, such as handling items, taking blood samples, and measuring sex, length, weight, etc.
The safety feature of ESA's tags is a glass cannister that breaks at a set pressure, cutting the link to the animal and allowing the tag to surface. This feature ensures the protection of the marine life while providing valuable data for conservation efforts.
In addition to marine conservation, ESA supports multiple projects to address the issues of marine litter, including using trackers attached to marine plastic to predict where litter might end up and potentially clean it up. For more detailed insights directly from Peter de Maagt’s presentations or ESA publications, I recommend checking ESA’s official resources or marine conservation technology conferences.
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