Funding from Stichting Lucie Burgers for new customized cameratags

Last year, I got the news that our proposal for the Stichting Lucie Burgers was granted, and that we could go ahead with purchasing high tech cameratags for follow-up studies.

Stichting Lucie Burgers yearly awards research projects in the field of behaviorial ecology. In our new study, we would like to investigate how green turtles impact their seagrass habitat, and how trophic interactions impact their spatial grazing strategy. In previous studies using our own assembled cameratags, we could film for 5 hrs straight, and measure temperature and depth.

With our new cameras from CATScam, we will be able to film for ± 8 hs, and additionally get information on the GPS trajectory of the animals, swimming speed, and more. More importantly, we can program the tags with a delayed start. This way, we can start filming in the morning and don’t include potential stress effects of capturing and handling the animals. The cameras arrived last week, see picture below.

Due to COVID19 related delays, we plan to use the tags in Mexico in 2022. Which gives me some time to play around with them, make sure I know how they work, and try them out. Updates will follow!