Remote Release Device for Marine Mammal Electronic Tags

Marine mammal behavioral research has shifted from direct observation to unobservable behaviors that occur at depth. Current emphases in tag development, such as high resolution sampling of acceleration are not well suited to transmission through Argos and necessitate instrument recovery by researchers. Similarly new tag technologies like CTD sensors create inherent tradeoffs between power consumption by sensors and transmission to satellites that are best resolved by tag recovery. Recovery probabilities would be dramatically increased by technologies that allow tag release to be under control of the researcher. C-2I provides an instrumentation independent, field installable interface that will permit data acquistion and retrieval using new sensor technologies and formats through reliable on-demand release and recovery.