Developing a new low-cost generation tag equipped with Argos-3/4 features dedicated to track migrating marine animals

The objective of SHARC (which stands for Satellite High-performance ARGOS-3/-4 Receive/transmit Communication), was to develop a new low-cost generation tag equipped with Argos-3/4 features dedicated to track migrating marine animals. Improvements for several key features include smaller weight and size, increased lifetime, enlarged data storage, bidirectional communication with satellite leading to increased volume of the satellite data transfer. The impact of global changes and increasing human activities on the marine eco-system is not always understood. In order to make more knowledgeable decisions about the use of our environment, we must better understand it and its living organisms. A step in this direction is to monitor and track the movements of organisms. However, one of the main impediments in doing this is the lack of accurate observations. Fortunately, a new powerful technique for observing large marine animals directly in their oceanic environment has emerged in the last decade. This so-called bio-logging technique uses recent progress in satellite telemetry and electronic miniaturisation. It takes advantage of marine animals carrying satellite transmitters and data loggers to record simultaneously environmental (e.g. light, pressure, temperature, salinity) and biological parameters (e.g. diving depth, swim speed, food intake) at given sampling frequencies, allowing aggregation of information about marine animals and their habitats through recording long time series. The advancement of monitoring technologies comes at a critical time when scientists want to monitor many different animals around the world because of concerns about their population size, health, or issues related to international disputes. The main advantage of the novel tags is the use of the ARGOS 3 / 4 system which allow a bidirectional link between the tag and satellite. This improves the reliability of the communication, one of the current critical problems of commercially available tags. Dedicated chips were designed by ANSEM (Belgium) and integrated in a tag by Star-Oddi (Iceland). The first tags passed full certification at CLS (France). Tagging in real life situations is pending. An industrialisation contract is currently being planned which should allow the scientific community to take full benefit of this development.