The old and the new: evaluating performance of acoustic telemetry systems in tracking migrating Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) smolt and European eel (Anguilla anguilla) around hydropower facilities

Acoustic telemetry represents the state-of-the-art technology for monitoring behaviour of aquatic organisms in the wild. Yet, the performance of different systems is rarely evaluated across species and environments. In this study, we evaluate two different acoustic telemetry systems; a commonly used...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Leander, Johan, Klaminder, Jonatan, Jonsson, Micael, Brodin, Tomas, Leonardsson, Kjell, Hellström, Gustav
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: NRC Research Press (a division of Canadian Science Publishing) 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1807/96907
http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjfas-2019-0058
Description
Summary:Acoustic telemetry represents the state-of-the-art technology for monitoring behaviour of aquatic organisms in the wild. Yet, the performance of different systems is rarely evaluated across species and environments. In this study, we evaluate two different acoustic telemetry systems; a commonly used analogue Pulse-Position-Modulation based system (Vemco PPM) and a newly developed high-residency digital Binary Phase Shift Key based system (Vemco HR2), in ability to track downstream migrating Atlantic salmon smolt (Salmo salar) and European eel (Anguilla anguilla) around hydropower facilities. High-precision GPS were used to evaluate precision and accuracy of hyperbolically positioned data derived from each system. The PPM based system had higher detection range than HR2 and generated more positions per transmissions for eels migrating close to bottom than for surface-oriented salmon smolts. HR2 generated ten-fold more positions per time unit than PPM, were less sensitive to noise, achieved sub-meter positional precision and were considerably more accurate than PPM-derived positions after filtering. HR2 was deemed more capable than PPM in fine-scale positioning at moderate distances at hydropower facilities. The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author.