How to follow a shark
When scientists tracked great white sharks to a mysterious meeting place in the middle of the Pacific, they dubbed it the White Shark Café. Do they eat or meet? What's going on there?
Dr Sal Jorgensen, a researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA), wanted the eyes to be on the scene, so he and engineer Thomas Maughan of sister institution MBARI developed a Shark Tracking Tag Café Camera with funding from the Packard Foundation. Attached to the dorsal fin, it detects diving and chasing behavior, then triggers a standard Sony Action Cam to record video, and finally detaches and floats for recovery. On its custom PCB, you'll find an ATSAMD21 microcontroller (same as Adafruit's Feather M0 boards); a compass/IMU that detects location, acceleration, and even tail flapping; an RGB light sensor; and a pressure transducer depth sensor (Figure A). A capacitive sensor detects its return to the surface, then a satellite modem phones the house.
If you dare to tag a shark, you can build your own shark camera: it's open source hardware and software. Maughan (a Make: reader!) taught intern Gabriel Santos a crash course in electronics which he dubbed TechFest, then Santos built the camera tags and shared the project on github. com/thommaughan/sharkcafecam. Santos, now a biologist, continues to lead TechFests at CalPoly, teaching the next generation of biologists how to use Arduinos and sensors.
Packard's goal was to put better technology in the hands of biologists. Maughan's team therefore shared their knowledge with Customized Animal Tracking Solutions to help them develop the CATS Cam (Figure B), now deployed by shark, whale and manta ray researchers around the world. rays and sea turtles. Jorgensen's work with CATS Cams revealed in 2019 that South African white sharks don't avoid kelp forests - a myth busted - but regularly cruise them, bad news for seals and surfers. Meanwhile, the California MBA branding program continues to produce amazing discoveries. Turns out, even the great whites are scared of something: they're fleeing their feeding grounds for up to a year after a single encounter with an orca.
When scientists tracked great white sharks to a mysterious meeting place in the middle of the Pacific, they dubbed it the White Shark Café. Do they eat or meet? What's going on there?
Dr Sal Jorgensen, a researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA), wanted the eyes to be on the scene, so he and engineer Thomas Maughan of sister institution MBARI developed a Shark Tracking Tag Café Camera with funding from the Packard Foundation. Attached to the dorsal fin, it detects diving and chasing behavior, then triggers a standard Sony Action Cam to record video, and finally detaches and floats for recovery. On its custom PCB, you'll find an ATSAMD21 microcontroller (same as Adafruit's Feather M0 boards); a compass/IMU that detects location, acceleration, and even tail flapping; an RGB light sensor; and a pressure transducer depth sensor (Figure A). A capacitive sensor detects its return to the surface, then a satellite modem phones the house.
If you dare to tag a shark, you can build your own shark camera: it's open source hardware and software. Maughan (a Make: reader!) taught intern Gabriel Santos a crash course in electronics which he dubbed TechFest, then Santos built the camera tags and shared the project on github. com/thommaughan/sharkcafecam. Santos, now a biologist, continues to lead TechFests at CalPoly, teaching the next generation of biologists how to use Arduinos and sensors.
Packard's goal was to put better technology in the hands of biologists. Maughan's team therefore shared their knowledge with Customized Animal Tracking Solutions to help them develop the CATS Cam (Figure B), now deployed by shark, whale and manta ray researchers around the world. rays and sea turtles. Jorgensen's work with CATS Cams revealed in 2019 that South African white sharks don't avoid kelp forests - a myth busted - but regularly cruise them, bad news for seals and surfers. Meanwhile, the California MBA branding program continues to produce amazing discoveries. Turns out, even the great whites are scared of something: they're fleeing their feeding grounds for up to a year after a single encounter with an orca.
What's Your Reaction?
