1. OPPORTUNITIES AND LIMITATIONS
FOR POP-UP SATELLITE TAGS IN
FRESH WATER ENVIRONMENTS
Compiled by Marco Flagg, Jacob Wolf Desert Star Systems LLC www.desertstar.com
using data contributions from SeaTag users and other sources cited
AFS Cal Nevada 2018, San Luis Obispo, March 2,2018

2. Operation of Pop-Up Satellite Tags (PSAT)
1. Fish are tagged & released
(Goetz)
2.Tag archives observations (~0.08 sec to
4 min intervals) for pre-programmed
period typically up to ~1 year (Goetz)
3.Tag pops up & sends limited data set
via Argos satellite (Seider)
4.Tag retrieval via satellite position and radio
direction finder yields full data set (Seider)

3. Opportunities with PSAT tags
Track over large scales,
without the need for a
monitoring infrastructure
(acoustic networks, etc.)
Ocean drifters track/simulate juvenile sea turtle
dispersion (Van Houtan)
Study animal response to
dynamic environmental
conditions
Sailfish tracking towards the convergence
zone around eddies (Fitchett)
Diel sailfish activity
relative to illumination
(Pohlot)
Obtain fine-scale observations
on animal behavior such as
activity or diving

4. Practical use of PSAT in Pelagic Marine Species:
Migration & Mortality Studies
Migration from light & SST observations
(Goldsmith)
Mortality from cessation of
temperature gradients (Goldsmith)
Vertical habitat from depth and temperature
observations (ICCAT/AOTTP)
Bluefin with SeaTag-LOT
(Goldsmith, pic SaltywaterTackle)

5. SeaTag: A PSAT line enabling fresh water tagging
Light,Temperature Light,Temp.,
Magnetometer
Light, Depth,
Temp., Mag.
Light, Depth,
Temp., Mag., Accel.
38g 38g-48g 57g 145g
$499-$899 $945-$1350 $1400-$2000 $1750-$2500
Single use Single use Single use Multi use
Solar
panel

6. SeaTag: A PSAT line enabling fresh water tagging
Characteristic Traditional PSAT SeaTag line of PSAT
Release
mechanism
Galvanic corrosion;
requires sea water
Kinetic; works in sea or fresh water
Migration
Estimation
Light & SST; too
inaccurate for fresh
water bodies
Magnetometer yields useful position
estimates under certain conditions:
Magnetic anomaly, large lakes or long
rivers crossing geomagnetic gradient.
Activity
observation
Not available Available via accelerometer
Physical recovery
(to obtain full
dataset)
Possible, but limited by
short satellite
transmission endurance
(~10 days).
Solar powered transmissions provide
long opportunities to track & recover
the tag. 88% recovery of reporting tags
observed in Lake Superior (Seider)
Cost At ~$4000 and no or
limited re-use, can be
cost prohibitive for
many studies
Acquisition cost $499-$2500.
-SeaTag-MOD reusable high-
capability; $850/deployment @ 3rd use
-SeaTag-LOT smallest, $499-$899

7. But aren’t PSAT too big for fresh water species?
First principles:
1. Total tag force = √(fbuoyant^2 +
fdrag^2)
2. At zero speed, tag force =
buoyant force (~10% of tag
weight)
3. Conclusion: You can use larger,
more capable tags for slower
moving animals, but use smaller
and more streamlined models for
faster animals.Large, high-capability SeaTag-MOD
on slow moving lobster (Morse)
Small SeaTag-LOT on fast moving
tuna (Goldsmith, pic Bobby Rice) SeaTag-LOT Forces (Lynch)

8. But aren’t PSAT too big for fresh water species?
SeaTag-MOD on trout (Goetz) SeaTag-MOD on lake sturgeon (Kough)
SeaTag-3D on Chinook salmon (Watkins)
Size:
•2% rule (Winter 1983&1996,AFS Fishing
Techniques)
•Species/use/life stage limits (Jepsen 2003)
•Internal tags up to 8% of body weight do not
affect salmon swimming (Collins 2013)
•SeaTag-MOD: 145g, for fish >= 1.8kg (8%
rule), >= 7.25kg (2% rule)
•SeaTag-3D: 57g, for fish >= 0.525kg (8% rule),
>= 2.9kg (2% rule)
14kg fish, 145g tag, 1.0%
7.2kg fish, 57g tag, 0.8%
5kg fish, 145g tag, 2.9%

9. Morphotype Specific Depth Habitat Selection of Lake
Trout in Lake Superior (Goetz)
Siscowet: high lipid, big eye, large fin,
angled snout
Lean: low lipid, small eye, small fin,
straight snout
Observation Period: 3-7 months
Sampling interval: 4 minutes
Animals tagged: 107 with 74 tags (completed
deployments as of 02/2018, more in progress)
Observations: Depth, temperature, pop-up location
Reporting Rate: 75% of tags
Physical Recovery Rate: 91% of reporting tags

10. Morphotype Specific Depth Habitat Selection of Lake
Trout in Lake Superior (Goetz)
Migration (tagging
and pop-up
location):
1. Lean and redfin
stayed close to
Isle Royale
2. Siscowet
migrated away
from island into
deep water

11. Morphotype Specific Depth Habitat Selection of Lake
Trout in Lake Superior (Goetz)
November
December
January
February
March
April
May
June
Depth(meters)
Temperature(C)
Sample depth & temperature profile of one siscowet trout:
Resides at greater depth during colder months; experiences
temperature drops during brief forays to shallower depth.

12. Morphotype Specific Depth Habitat Selection of Lake
Trout in Lake Superior (Goetz)
Aggregate results, depth
habitat:
•Lean trout reside at
shallow depth
•Siscowet trout change
their depth distribution
drastically and dive to
much greater depth
•Redfin trout exhibit
intermediate behavior
Siscowet
Lean
Redfin
Aggregate depth June – September. Darker colors
indicate more time spent at that depth

13. How Important is Water Temperature for Chinook
Distribution? (Watkins)
Observation Period: 6 days – 4 months
Sampling interval: 1 minutes
Animals tagged: Evaluation project. Date from 2
recovered tags out of 4 successful deployments.
Observations: Depth, temperature, pop-up location
Reporting: None (see limitations)
Recovered: 2 out of 4

14. How Important is Water Temperature for Chinook
Distribution? (Watkins)
Migration (tagging and pop-up location):
1. Both fish moved to Salmon River, where tags were found on
shore by fishers.
Braddock Bay
Oswego
Salmon
River
July 13
July 18
Oct
6
Sept
22
?

15. How Important is Water Temperature for Chinook
Distribution? (Watkins)
Sept 6,
2017
Enter Salmon River
July 13,
2017
Oswego, NY
64 second records
Upwelling
Aug 27-29?
Temperature (Celsius)
Thermocline

16. How Important is Water Temperature for Chinook
Distribution? (Watkins)
Conclusions
•Chinook follow temperature (13 C) at base of thermocline
extremely closely
•Quickly respond to thermal changes such as upwelling
events

17. Observation Period: 4 months programmed
Sampling interval: 64 seconds
Animals tagged: Data from 25 tagged animals (total # of animals tagged not specified)
Observations: Acceleration, Depth,Temp., Pop-up location
Reporting Rate: 25 tags
Physical Recovery Rate: 12 tags (48%)
Diel timing of lake sturgeon activity (Kough)

18. Diel timing of lake sturgeon activity (Kough)
Migration

19. Diel timing of lake sturgeon activity (Kough)
Acceleration Events

20. Diel timing of lake sturgeon activity (Kough)
24h Circular Analysis of Activity
Conclusion: Nocturnal Activity

21. • Construction of the Mario M. Cuomo
Bridge on the Hudson River began in 2013
• AKRF, Inc. has conducted sturgeon
monitoring and studies as part of the
bridge construction project, on the behalf
of the NewYork State Thruway Authority
• Studies have focused on sturgeon
ecology, as well as monitoring of
anthropogenic impacts to shortnose
sturgeon and Atlantic sturgeon
AKRF
Justin Krebs
jkrebs@akrf.com

22. • Vessel strikes are a significant threat to sturgeon populations
in the Delaware, Hudson, and James Rivers (NMFS BiOp 2017)
• Considerable vessel traffic on the Hudson River
• Commercial tankers, tugs and barges, passenger ferries,
law enforcement boats
• Recreational fishing and pleasure boats
• To better understand the risk to sturgeon posed by vessel
traffic, AKRF and theThruway Authority conducted a study to
characterize the vertical distribution of Atlantic sturgeon in
the water column in the Hudson River (Conservation
Recommendation in the NMFS Biological Opinion for the
project)
• The goal of the study is to address a significant question:
Where do sturgeon swim in the water column and how often
are they near the water’s surface?
• Critical to understanding the risk
of vessel strike

23. • During spring 2017, Atlantic sturgeon were collected
from a tidal freshwater portion of the Hudson River
approximately 50 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.
• Ten subadult sturgeon were fitted with SeaTag 3D
pop-off satellite archive tags (PSATs) obtained from
Desert Star Systems and released to the river
• Tags were programmed to log water depth and
temperature at 4-minute intervals and to transmit 2-
hour depth and temperature histograms to the Argos
satellite
• Tags were programmed to pop off in January 2018
following migration of fish to the Atlantic Ocean and
to begin transmitting data continuously at that time
• No results yet; data collection is underway

24. Freshwater Limitations of PSAT tags
In rivers or small lakes,
high risk of popped-up
tags quickly beaching
and with limited or no
ability of effective
satellite reporting.
Even with
magnetometer
sensing, estimated
(underwater) positions
often too inaccurate
Beached tag, Lake Superior (Seider)
Geomagnetic estimated tag
positions, Lake Superior (Goetz)

25. Sneak Preview:
Ongoing PSAT Research or Proposals at Desert Star
1. A tag that will detect and report the location and time of spawning
2. A blood sampling tag, drawing multiple samples responsive to
specified conditions such as fish activity level, temperature, depth
or specified time
3. A wide-area, precision (~meters) positioning tag based on acoustic
signal detection and a sparse (1km-10km interval) static pinger
network in the body of water (inversed principle fromVemco,
Lotek ATS etc.)
4. Optimizations for improved fresh water and river performance,
incl. GPS integration for easier tag recovery, reporting of mission
statistics first, insulated antenna to transmit more effectively if
part submerged
Please let us know if interested! It may prioritize that work.

26. Citations
Goetz, R. (2017) Lake trout are differentiated on the basis of fin size/shape, fat level and habitat depth, Unpublished.
Goldsmith, W. M., Scheld, A. M., & Graves, J. E. (2017). Performance of a low-cost, solar powered
pop-up satellite archival tag for assessing post-release mortality of Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) caught in the US east coast light-
tackle recreational fishery. Animal Biotelemetry,5(1). doi:10.1186/s40317-017-0144-9
Houtan, K. S., Francke, D. L., Alessi, S., Jones, T. T., Martin, S. L., Kurpita, L., . . . Baird, R. W.
(2016). The developmental biogeography of hawksbill sea turtles in the North Pacific. Ecology and Evolution,6(8), 2378-2389.
doi:10.1002/ece3.2034
Jespin, N. ( 2003). A brief discussion on the 2% tag/body mass rule of thumb, Aquatic telemetry:
advances and applications. Proceedings of the Fifth Conference on Fish Telmetry held in Europe.
Kough, A. S., Jacobs, G. R., Gorsky, D., & Willink, P. W. (2018). Diel timing of lake sturgeon (
Acipenser fulvescens ) activity revealed by satellite tags in the Laurentian Great Lake
Basin. Journal of Great Lakes Research,44(1), 157-165. doi:10.1016/j.jglr.2017.10.008
Lynch, S. D., Marcek, B. J., Marshall, H. M., Bushnell, P. G., Bernal, D., & Brill, R. W. (2017).
The effects of pop-up satellite archival tags (PSATs) on the metabolic rate and swimmint
kinematics of juvenile sandbar shark Carcharhinus plumbeus. Fisheries Research,186, 205 215.
doi:10.1016/j.fishres.2016.08.013
Morse, B. (2013). American Lobster Tagging Project. http://www.cfrn-rcrp.ca/article126
Pohlot, B et al. (2013). Distribution, Behavior, and Habitat Use of Sailfish in the Tropical Eastern
Pacific.
Pohlot, B. G., & Ehrhardt, N. (2017). An analysis of sailfish daily activity in the Eastern Pacific
Ocean using satellite tagging and recreational fisheries data. ICES Journal of Marine Science.
doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsx082
Seider, M et al. (2017) Methods for Successful Recovery of Pop-up Satellite Tags: Finding a Needle
in a Haystack.
Watkins, J (2017) Tracking diel foraging behavior of Chinook Salmon in Lake Ontario using pop
off archival satellite tags.