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By Harriette Halepis

Tracking an animal, any kind of animal, used to mean tagging the animal, and then collected the tags in order to analyze data. Thanks to a recent GPS tracking breakthrough, tracking animals (well, fish, anyway) has become a lot easier.

GPS & Fish

Scientists from the Marine Biological Association have found a way to track fish using a new GPS tracking technology. This technology allows scientists to tag fish without ever having to retrieve the tag in order to gather data. Instead, data is transmitted directly to a scientist’s laptop, eliminating the need to find the original tag ever again.

This new method of wildlife tracking was recently utilized off the Gulf of Cadiz in order to track three sunfish. Two of the sunfish disappeared, but scientists were able to track the third fish for months. During this time, scientists noted that the sunfish travels to warmer climates during the winter season as suspected. In addition, scientists learned that these fish also stop and rest along the way – a fact that was entirely unknown.

While this new form of GPS tracking technology may not seem entirely earth shattering, the fact of the matter is that thanks to this technology scientists can now control industrial fishing. To say the least, this GPS technology will change the way that scientists study marine life. Those that worked on this project hope to make GPS trackers even smaller in the future, so that tiny fish might be tracked.