Underwater Highway

With the help of new technology, researchers can now track the movement of marine animals off the California coastline. Think EZ Pass for fish.

Dr. Christopher Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach, along with researchers across Southern California, have developed a high-tech tracking system to follow ocean animals as they migrate their own toll road along the Pacific coast. The Southern California Acoustic Telemetry Tracking Network (SCATTN) will enable researchers to learn more about the movements of marine life without having to get into the water.

This research will be posted regularly on the SCATTN.org website.

According to Lowe, animals are tagged with special acoustic transmitters that produce a unique ID code, or sound pulse, that can be detected and logged by receivers that have been placed all up and down the coastline, from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border. These transmitters, which can last up to 10 years, can convey a variety of information, such as temperature, depth and acceleration.

Many fish have been found to stay close to the shore while others travel long distances. Lowe said the transmitters have shown that the shovelnose guitarfish, for instance, travels from La Jolla to Malibu, a fact few researchers knew.

Lowe and his team have partnered with Cal State Northridge’s Nearshore Fisheries Lab; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary; NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center; the Scripps Institute of Oceanography’s Semmens Lab and the UC Santa Barbara McCauley Lab.

“The great thing about this technology is that we all have our own projects but now we can share that data and learn more about the species we are studying than if we were studying this independently,” Lowe said.

Lowe called the technology a “game-changer.”

The SCATTN.org website also will give the public a chance to learn how and where fish and other marine animals migrate. The site allows visitors to follow several different animals and includes animal biographies and current SCATTN projects.

“Often people would see me tagging great white sharks and ask questions about where these sharks travel,” Lowe said. “So the website is for the public. We thought wouldn’t it be cool for the public to understand what we do.”