Two more salmons recaptured with DST micro

The Icelandic Institute of Freshwater Fisheries recently caught two salmons which had migrated from sea back to the river.  The fish were internally tagged with DST micro tags in the spring of 2006, when they were smolts.  The tags had recorded depth and temperature every hour for the whole period, or 15 months. The project is unique as it captures the whole sea migration route of the fish, using the smallest depth-temperature tags available on the world market.  Read more here.

New Zealand starfish tagging program!

Fiordland, New Zealand is one of the wettest locations in the world.  The result of the climate is that the fiords in the region have a semi-permanent freshwater layer overlying the seawater.  One of the most important species inhabiting the fiords is the eleven-arm starfish Coscinasterias muricate, which is a veracious predator and can control the distribution of other important organisms such as shellfish. 

To find more about the starfish's feeding ecology and movement, and specifically how the freshwater layer influences their behaviour, the University of Otago and Cawthron Institute in New Zealand tagged a few starfish with Star-Oddi temperature/depth/time DST-milli tags.  Star-Oddi tags are proving to be an exciting and valuable research tool, allowing the scientists to conduct the first known archival tagging of predatory starfish for the purpose of understanding their behaviours.  Read full article here.