{"id":1488,"date":"2015-05-28T15:33:22","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T15:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/superpod.ml.duke.edu\/read\/?p=1488"},"modified":"2017-07-24T18:38:51","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T18:38:51","slug":"hatteras-tagging-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/read\/2015\/05\/28\/hatteras-tagging-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Hatteras Tagging Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’re now almost half-way through our spring field season\u00a0– we’ve\u00a0been busy working off Cape Hatteras for the past two weeks. \u00a0We have deployed six\u00a0satellite-linked transmitters on pilot whales and one more on a pelagic bottlenose dolphin. \u00a0Two of the tags we have deployed on pilot whales also transmit data on dive duration and depth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"DTAG\"<\/a>
Digital Acoustic Tag deployed on a pilot whale off Cape Hatteras<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

On Monday we also deployed our first\u00a0Digital Acoustic Tag<\/a>\u00a0of the field season on a pilot whale. \u00a0These tags record depth, orientation and acceleration using a\u00a0suite of sensors as well as\u00a0a record of the acoustic environment of the tagged whale. The tags\u00a0sample the orientation of the animal in three dimensions with sufficient resolution to capture individual fluke strokes. We program\u00a0the tags to release from the animal at a pre-determined\u00a0time by venting the suction cups (this works most of the time). A VHF transmitter\u00a0embedded in the tag helps us to track the whale\u00a0and to recover the device. Once the tag is jettisoned from the whale and recovered, we download data from the tag to a computer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Exocetus\"<\/a>
Andy, Danielle and Heather lounging around offshore on the Exocetus while conducting a focal follow of a tagged pilot whale.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

We attached the tag to a whale that we found in\u00a0a large\u00a0aggregation\u00a0that contained several of our satellite-tagged animals. We followed it for six hours from our small Rigid-Hulled Inflatable Boat, the Exocetus. We kept track of the composition of the group of the tagged whale – it was initially in a pretty tight group of 17, but peeled off from this group with four other whales for a couple of hours before rejoining the original group in another large feeding aggregation. \u00a0It’s always interesting to peer into the lives of these animals for a few hours. \u00a0We successfully recovered the tag at about 5:30 and were back on shore by 8:00 PM.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Great<\/a>
South polar\u00a0skua foraging 40 nautical miles off Cape Hatteras<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

As always, it’s been a bit of a struggle to deal with the weather 40 miles from shore – we’ve turned around twice this week when sea conditions turned out to be worse than forecast. \u00a0But it’s always worth it when we manage to get offshore – on Monday we were also treated to sightings of two South Polar\u00a0Skuas, a flock of phalaropes and a ton of scalloped hammerheads in and amongst the pilot whales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re now almost half-way through our spring field season\u00a0– we’ve\u00a0been busy working off Cape Hatteras for the past two weeks. \u00a0We have deployed six\u00a0satellite-linked transmitters on pilot whales and one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1406,"featured_media":1493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1567,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions\/1567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/read\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}