Towards a best practice in acoustic telemetry mooring design.

Abstract

This document presents trialled and tested, best practice methods for the subsea deployment of acoustic telemetry equipment developed by two of the world’s longest operating animal telemetry networks, the Ocean Tracking Network (OTN, www.oceantrackingnetwork.org) and the Animal Tracking Facility of Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS, https://imos.org.au/facility/animal-tracking/acoustic-telemetry). Over the past two decades, these two telemetry networks have implemented and refined methods for the safe and optimal deployment of subsea equipment in their respective regions of operation and in diverse marine systems (i.e. from estuarine coastal sites to deep offshore waters). Drawing on the lessons learned, this document presents the rationales for particular mooring configurations and deployments, as well as a decision tree to aid users in determining the optimal mooring design for their sites. A selection of case studies spanning estuarine, coastal and offshore marine environments is provided to exemplify the mooring design process. The objectives of this document are to inform safe field operations, optimum resource use and generation of the highest-quality acoustic telemetry data. This is intended to be a living document, and will be updated and refined as new robust advances in the deployment of acoustic telemetry equipment are made. We encourage interested researchers to submit an Issue via the dedicated GitHub page https://github.com/ocean-tracking-network/OBPSmoorings to discuss their respective approaches, and help refine the contents of this document.