Tagging and Tracking of Large Fish Along the PNW Coast

The goal of this Navy-funded project is to monitor Pacific Salmon along the coasts of Oregon and Washington.

As part of this project, separate from OOI cruises, this research team tags Pacific Salmon. This team tracks the salmon by placing Vemco tag readers (model VR2C) on moorings, including three OOI Endurance Array moorings: the Oregon Inshore Surface Mooring (CE01ISSM), the Washington Inshore Surface Mooring (CE06ISSM), and the Washington Shelf Surface Mooring (CE07SHSM). CE07SHSM is close to many active naval operations. When a tagged fish approaches an OOI mooring with a tag reader, the reader will log the event and then within hours it will telemeter data to shore. Real-time data could be used by commercial fishers, military operations, and other mariners.

Tag readers also detect animals tagged via other projects. In other projects, this research group has tagged hundreds of sharks from California to Alaska (see the Chapple Lab for more information). Other PNW research groups have tagged sturgeon, other large fish, and even Dungeness crabs. All received data are made available through OOI’s raw data server.

Reference Designators

The identifier ARCVRA is from Acoustic ReCeiVeR Series A.

• CE01ISSM-MFD35-03-ARCVRA000
• CE06ISSM-MFD35-03-ARCVRA000
• CE07SHSM-RID26-03-ARCVRA000

Access Data

A file with tag data is generated each time one of the moorings with a tag reader calls home. These hundreds of small files have been concatenated into one file per deployment per mooring. The concatenated files are in comma separate value (csv) format.

Download the Oregon Inshore Data (.csv)

Download the Washington Inshore Data (.csv)

Download the Washington Shelf Data (.csv)

Instrument Models & Deployed Locations