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| The Antarctic Humpback Whale Program (AHWP) |
What is a satellite tag?
Most large whales of the world use immense expanses of ocean to meet their habitat requirements. It has always been a huge difficulty to track whales across ocean basins for this reason. For some species, we are not even sure where the majority of their lives are spent. Thankfully, due to advances in satellite technology, we now have the ability to track whales for months at a time using satellite linked locations. This provides us with a real time look at where whales venture off to at different times of the year. Because satellite tags must stay on whales for extended periods of time, they are actually implanted in the blubber layer of the whale. This keeps the tag secure and gives us better long-term insight regarding the whales' movement patterns, distribution and habitat requirements. Over time, the tag is expelled from the body of the whale, similar to what a human body does with a sliver. With this information, researchers can discover migratory routes, critical feeding, breeding and calving grounds. Using this information we can better protect whales, many of which are endangered or threatened, by understanding where they are at specific times of the year. Satellite tags have already had great success in yielding important distributional and habitat information on many marine species including seals, sea lions, blue whales, right whales, gray whales and fin whales.
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