In this video Todd Jones gives a summary of his recent study, which aims to increase our understanding of the impact that carrying electronic tags can have on aquatic animals. Does the increased drag have power implications? Do the tags themselves affect the behavior of the animals? To answer these questions Todd and his colleagues made cast models of sea turtles and put them in a wind tunnel to record the differences in drag force, with or without tags. They modeled the results to determine the %drag increase caused by different sized tags, and then discussed how much drag is acceptable for an organism before it’s behavior is significantly altered, and also thought about the results from an animal welfare perspective.

Read the article: Calculating the ecological impacts of animal-borne instruments on aquatic organisms.
Read the press release.