Tracking tagged fish on the web

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Taken from Fishing Worlds` 11-7-11 Email Newsletter

Tracking tagged fish on the web

11 Jul 2011

By John Newbery

THE CSIRO has developed an innovative website called Ocean Tracks which might just get the computer generation interested in how fish behave in their oceanic environment.

Ocean Tracks is a science-meets-game engine website that displays the paths swum by tagged fish. The website follows three coastal and six open-ocean fish from its database, including Mirella the gold spot trevally, Nero the spangled emperor, Hitomi the bigeye tuna, Papa the whale shark and Galileo the tiger shark.

The CSIRO hopes that developments such as this will help transform the way people think about and interact with their environment. The web application shows lifelike, three-dimensional animations of fish in their underwater environment. The site offers stories about the animals and information on tagging research. Visitors can link Ocean Tracks to their Facebook page, recommend it to their friends and share it through other social sites and online communities.

Go to www.oceantracks.csiro.au