Tracking Progress: Success and Failure of Biologging in Protecting the Global Ocean

Friday, February 17, 2012: 8:30 AM-11:30 AM
Room 206-207 (VCC West Building)
Biologging, the science of tracking animals by satellite, global positioning system (GPS), and similar technologies, has transformed our understanding of the connectedness of the ocean at a global scale. In the last decade, biologging has revealed the global distribution of marine predators in the context of their oceanographic environment. Biologging is also heralded as a critical tool in the marine biodiversity crisis because the spatially explicit outputs can be translated into management and policy decision-making. Despite the more than $30 million applied to this technology, studies continue to focus on baseline biological knowledge and do not take essential steps to translate data to management and policy-relevant products. Additionally, small-scale studies are rarely synergized into coordinated, multidisciplinary efforts. Despite the unique capacity to do so, there has been a large-scale failure to effectively apply this technology to spatially explicit management efforts, link animal distributions to effective policy, and link movements to management in the face of climate change. This session will explore what has hindered the field of biologging from aiding in effective management and will highlight successful case studies. In the breakout session, we will define a framework to push the field of biologging into its next realm as one of the most influential tools in abating the global biodiversity crisis.
Organizer:
Sara M. Maxwell, Marine Conservation Institute and University of California
Co-Organizer:
Kristen M. Hart, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Moderators:
David Welch, Kintama Research Ltd.
and Larry Crowder, Stanford University
Speakers:
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