Ph.D. candidate Jake Brownscombe is in Culebra, Puerto Rico, for the month of December with colleagues from Dr. Andy Danylchuk’s lab. They are downloading data from an acoustic telemetry array designed to track both broad and fine-scale movements of bonefish, permit, great barracuda, and green sea turtles in shallow marine ecosystems.
Set up in
the summer of 2012, this unique telemetry system has now collected over 1.5 years of data on movement, behaviour, and habitat-use of these species. The data are providing novel insights into how these species utilize highly diverse coral reefs, flats, seagrass beds, and coastal lagoons across multiple seasons. The research team is also capturing great barracuda with rod and reel to tag them with acoustic transmitters, ensuring that more top predators are included in the tracking system.
As data continue to come in, they reveal important information on the spatial ecology, behaviour, population connectivity, and predator-prey dynamics of ecologically and economically important tropical marine species.
