Scientists meet industry at the COST-ETN Annual meeting
The European Tracking Network (ETN) meets the manufacturers supplying acoustic telemetry equipment to discuss the way forward for compatibility in acoustic telemetry.
Acoustic telemetry is widely used to investigate aquatic animal movement. It is a technique in which the signals transmitted from implanted or externally attached acoustic transmitters are detected and logged by nearby acoustic receivers. This method can, in theory, enable all tracking equipment across the globe to detect all tags deployed and active at a given time—as long as all equipment manufacturers use compatible coding schemes operating on the same frequencies.
However, over the years, manufacturers have developed different approaches to encoding the transmitted data, hampering the compatibility across brands. As the aquatic animal tracking research community organises towards networks of devices and data, incompatibility becomes more problematic and jeopardizes the unique scientific benefits offered by the networking approach. ETN makes a plea for collaboration among the manufacturers globally and proposed a set of open protocols to ensure equipment interoperability.
On 5 April 2022 ETN organized a meeting at the COST-ETN annual meeting in Londonderry, with the manufacturers to discuss the details of these open protocols. Chelonia, Innovasea, Lotek, Sonotronics, Star-Oddi, Thelma-Biotel were represented at the meeting.
The ETN data portal is developed by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) as part of the Flemish contribution to LifeWatch.
Photo credit: Stephen Latimer Photography
However, over the years, manufacturers have developed different approaches to encoding the transmitted data, hampering the compatibility across brands. As the aquatic animal tracking research community organises towards networks of devices and data, incompatibility becomes more problematic and jeopardizes the unique scientific benefits offered by the networking approach. ETN makes a plea for collaboration among the manufacturers globally and proposed a set of open protocols to ensure equipment interoperability.
On 5 April 2022 ETN organized a meeting at the COST-ETN annual meeting in Londonderry, with the manufacturers to discuss the details of these open protocols. Chelonia, Innovasea, Lotek, Sonotronics, Star-Oddi, Thelma-Biotel were represented at the meeting.
The ETN data portal is developed by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) as part of the Flemish contribution to LifeWatch.
Photo credit: Stephen Latimer Photography
