The Innovation Award Shortlist

Flotsam data storage tag, Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science

Understanding how fish and other animals use the marine environment is critical to developing policies for sustainable exploitation and conservation. Marine biologists attach electronic data loggers to animals to gain ecological understanding, but recovering the data has, until now, depended either upon expensive satellite links or fishermen returning loggers from the fish they catch.

Cefas, as world leaders in the development and use of electronic data loggers, has developed a small, robust and reliable data logger: the CTL G5. This is used around the world to study fish, seabirds and small mammals. To enhance logger recovery we added a flotation device to the CTL G5 logger. This ‘flotsam tag’ is based on the principle that a tagged fish that remains uncaught eventually dies and decomposes. The tag is then released and floats to the sea’s surface where it is carried by currents onto the shore. The tag’s bright colour attracts beachcombers, who then return it to gain a reward.

The benefit is twofold. First, these tags collect information on non-commercial or other species for which there is no other route for tag recovery. Second, the tags significantly increase the volume of data collected on commercial species at little extra cost. The general public are involved with the research and fascinated by it. Their excitement at finding a ‘message in a bottle’ provides a spark for a deeper understanding of the role of marine science and our ‘blue planet’.