Thursday, January 14, 2010

... getting about the ocean

If you'd like to see some serious mileage (kilometrege?) the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) project involves electronic tracking of sharks, tuna, turtles, albatrosses, etc, 23 species in all, as they roam up and down the west coast and the width of the Pacific ocean. Eg, a black-footed albatross tagged in July 2007 has logged 12073 miles since; a leatherback turtle has traveled 5366 miles in 13 months; a bluefin tuna has swum upwards of 45 000 miles since it was tagged around August 2002. The papers coming out of the project are being collected at Public Library of Science (PLoS).

1 comment: