Coelacanth tracking study bears some fruit. Newslink

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Interesting.

http://www.sanbi.org/news/coelacanth-tagging-study-success

Peter Timm, deep diving discoverer of Sodwana’s coelacanths receives an email from Paris.

Hours earlier, a satellite tag holding the secrets of nine months of coelacanth behaviour had popped to the surface at Sodwana Bay. But night comes early on the east coast and it was impossible to launch a boat to search for the tag until the following morning. So the little grey egg-sized tag and its vital data spent the night adrift in a black sea in the world’s second fastest current.
The satellite tag is a Pop-up Archival Transmitting tag or PAT tag which uses satellite technology to transmit its position information once it reaches the surface. Contained in the tag is information about depth, light and water temperature of the tagged animal’s environment. The tag transmits summarised data via satellite but the full set of data stored on the tag can only be downloaded once the tag is recovered. The tag was programmed to release to the surface at midnight nine months after the fish was tagged so that the risk of the tag’s battery running out was minimised.