May 22, 2009

Welcome to POST's second e-blast, a regular communication of the Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking (POST) Project's recent developments and achievements.  Missed the first installment?  Turn back the clock and find it online.

Enjoy this month's news, and please pass it on to anyone who might be interested in POST's progress -- they can always subscribe for themselves here.

Six million and counting

POST hit a milestone this month.  A big one.  Since that memorable day in 2004 when data were first downloaded from POST acoustic receivers, we have heard more than 6,000,000 pings from tagged animals.  That's over one MILLION detections per year!

The very first animal to "say hello" to a POST receiver in early 2004 was a coho salmon tagged at the Tenderfoot Creek Hatchery, near Squamish, BC.  Most recently, we detected a locally tagged lingcod in Prince William Sound, AK, in late April.  As we speak, scientists are once again out on the water downloading data from each and every POST receiver, adding to our database on a near weekly basis.  Take a second to think of all the tagged animals, and all the places they've been detected along the West Coast over the past five years.  Mind boggling, isn't it?

You too can contribute to the Census of Marine Life

Calling all researchers.  There is just over one year left to have a hand in the ambitious, international effort of the Census of Marine Life.  The Census is a global network of researchers engaged in a 10-year scientific initiative to assess and explain the distribution, diversity, and abundance of life in the oceans.

We have funding for members of the POST community to play a role in this massive endeavour before it wraps in 2010.  POST is considering a collection of new papers in PLoS One; if you're itching to get some POST-related research published, please do let us know.  Also, a number of synthetic themes have emerged from thinking across the 17 different Census projects.  If you want to participate in groups convening around any of the following cross-cutting topics, raise your hand today: Technologies for a "Transparent Ocean"; Developing New Tag Technologies; Animals as Ocean Sensors; Range Maps of Marine Species; Estimates of What's Been or Might be Lost Soon.  If you are interested in contributing to a PLoS collection or the cross-cutting topics, ask us about POST defraying the cost of your publication fees or meeting-related travel.

Expanded tracking in Puget Sound

Our array has grown yet again.  On April 23, a new curtain of acoustic receivers was draped across Admiralty Inlet, the main entrance (and exit) to Puget Sound.  The cooperative deployment allows a consortium of over 30 researchers scattered throughout the reaches of Puget Sound to track the ins and outs of hundreds of animals they tag every year.  Along with receivers that the Puget Sound Telemetry Group (PSTG) themselves deploy across the smaller eastern entrances, the Admiralty line ensures that no tagged animal will go undetected as they move between Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  Scientists from the PSTG are excited to use data from our new line to help address conservation and management issues for local stocks of six-gill shark, Chinook, and coho, to name a few.  Researchers based outside Puget Sound are eager to see if their tagged animals will venture into the Sound.  And we are ever curious to see the results.

Above: a POST receiver deployed in the Vancouver Aquarium's Strait of Georgia exhibit.

More to come in June!  If you need a more regular POST fix, or simply want to know more, point your browser to www.postcoml.org.  And if there's something you'd particularly like to see e-featured in the months to come, please send your ideas to us.