Animal Borne Ocean Sensors – AniBOS – An Essential Component of the Global Ocean Observing System

Abstract

Marine animals equipped with biological and physical electronic sensors have produced long-term data streams on key marine environmental variables, hydrography, animal behavior and ecology. These data are an essential component of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS). The Animal Borne Ocean Sensors (AniBOS) network aims to coordinate the long-term collection and delivery of marine data streams, providing a complementary capability to other GOOS networks that monitor Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs), essential climate variables (ECVs) and essential biodiversity variables (EBVs). AniBOS augments observations of temperature and salinity within the upper ocean, in areas that are under-sampled, providing information that is urgently needed for an improved understanding of climate and ocean variability and for forecasting. Additionally, measurements of chlorophyll fluorescence and dissolved oxygen concentrations are emerging. The observations AniBOS provides are used widely across the research, modeling and operational oceanographic communities. High latitude, shallow coastal shelves and tropical seas have historically been sampled poorly with traditional observing platforms for many reasons including sea ice presence, limited satellite coverage and logistical costs. Animal-borne sensors are helping to fill that gap by collecting and transmitting in near real time an average of 500 temperature-salinity-depth profiles per animal annually and, when instruments are recovered (∼30% of instruments deployed annually, n = 103 ± 34), up to 1,000 profiles per month in these regions. Increased observations from under-sampled regions greatly improve the accuracy and confidence in estimates of ocean state and improve studies of climate variability by delivering data that refine climate prediction estimates at regional and global scales. The GOOS Observations Coordination Group (OCG) reviews, advises on and coordinates activities across the global ocean observing networks to strengthen the effective implementation of the system. AniBOS was formally recognized in 2020 as a GOOS network. This improves our ability to observe the ocean’s structure and animals that live in them more comprehensively, concomitantly improving our understanding of global ocean and climate processes for societal benefit consistent with the UN Sustainability Goals 13 and 14: Climate and Life below Water. Working within the GOOS OCG framework ensures that AniBOS is an essential component of an integrated Global Ocean Observing System.

Movements of southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) from Davis Base, Antarctica: combining population genetics and tracking data

“…We immobilized the 12 seals as part of an integrated oceanography and animal behaviour study (McMahon et al 2021). From each seal, we took morphometric measurements including standard body length, maximum girth, and weight (Field et al 2002).…”

Seasonal Transformation and Spatial Variability of Water Masses Within MacKenzie Polynya, Prydz Bay

“…The unprecedented detail provided by seal-observed oceanographic data (McMahon et al, 2021) in MP provides new insights into the governing processes in a coastal polynya that is influenced by both strong sea ice formation and high input of glacial meltwater. MP may illustrate how other coastal polynyas will respond to the future increase of fresh meltwater input in response to a changing climate.…”

Key questions in marine mammal bioenergetics

“… Isojunno et al, 2018 ; Wilson et al, 2020 ; McDonald et al, 2021 ). They also provide information on the physical and biological environment that can characterise the prey landscape ( Arranz et al, 2011 ; Goulet et al, 2019 ; McMahon et al, 2019 , 2021 ). Unmanned systems are currently being applied to marine mammal bioenergetics, particularly the use of aerial systems to estimate body condition and growth ( Fearnbach et al, 2018 ; Lemos et al, 2020 ; Aoki et al, 2021 ; Currie et al, 2021 ; Shero et al, 2021 ; Stewart et al, 2021a ; Christiansen et al, 2022 ), and surface and underwater systems to survey prey communities ( Kuhn et al, 2019 ; Benoit-Bird et al, 2020 ).…”