IDBR Type B: Life-long vital rate telemetry in marine homeotherms

Alaska Sealife Center, Seward AK

Investigators

Abstract

An award is made to the Alaska SeaLife Center (Seward, AK) to develop a miniaturized, implantable, life-long vital rate monitor for warm-bodied marine animals. This study will provide one postdoctoral researcher and a technical research associate the opportunity to participate in the multi-disciplinary integration of science and technology, and the application of technological innovation to promoting innovative biological research. Through a custom education and outreach package, the development efforts and linkages between technological innovation and biological research will be brought to a broad public audience including potential users of the new instrument, other scientists, public people of all ages, as well as grades 6-12 school children. The outreach package will enhance an existing, standards conforming STEM curriculum, downloadable from a project-specific website. Through addition of a geo-referenced data and information portal to this website (under development via separate funding, to go live in 2016), in combination with regionally available resources (distributed classroom activities kits) and remotely accessible training opportunities, modern science and technology learning opportunities will be brought to under-served rural classrooms in Alaska. The purpose of the Life History Transmitter (LHX tag) is to determine survival, causes and locations of mortality of host animals. In female hosts, LHX tags also determine the age at birth of their first pup and the number of pups born over their life. Oceans comprise the majority of the Earth's biosphere, and marine ecosystems are faced with potentially dramatic changes driven by natural and human factors, including use of natural resources and climate change. Many linkages between causes of changes, and effects in complex marine ecosystems, specially those involving top level consumers as well as their predators and prey, remain poorly understood, largely due to a lack of feasible ways to observe many marine species that spend most of their life at sea or under water. To overcome this difficulty, a new monitoring device was developed under previous IDBR funding that enables the collection of predation, survival and female reproductive data by a single instrument, no matter where the host might move to, feed, breed, and die. Building on the success of this new telemetry device that provided the first direct at-sea determination of predation rates on a large marine predator from satellite-linked transmissions initiated only after the death of the host, this project will improve the capabilities and enable the production of the Life History Transmitter, for collaborative studies on many top level species of interest and concern. This will enable researchers from a broad community of potential users to conceive and apply new experimental designs to provide a major surge in our understanding of marine ecosystems, food chain linkages, as well as consumer driven and resource driven effects within the many unresolved knowledge gaps.