Marine animals help solve ocean issues

Sensors attached to animals gather valuable data to track and mitigate the human influence on marine life. The Kobe University review paper emphasizes the importance of integrating data from various sources and advocates for an “Internet of Animals” based on open access and shared standards.

Humanity influences marine life through a broad range of activities, spanning from fishing and pollution to noise from boats, construction and mining. To enable a sustainable life together, we need to monitor the influence of our activities on marine life and use this data to establish effective policies. Kobe University animal ecologist IWATA Takashi says: “There is a wealth of oceanographic data from research vessels, drifting buoys and satellites. But due to technological and economic constraints, there are many observation gaps and some areas are inaccessible to humans, such as under sea ice or during harsh weather.” In addition, it is often difficult to understand the influence different factors have on individual animals, thus making the development of targeted policies difficult.

But if we want to know about the effects humans have on animals, who better to ask than the animals themselves? “Biologging,” which refers to attaching sensors, cameras or other small devices to wild animals, has traditionally been used to learn about their behavior and distribution, but more recently it has also become useful for studying the environmental conditions the animals encounter. Iwata explains, “We try to minimize the impact this has on the animals by keeping the overall weight of the devices to less than 3% of the animal’s body weight, or even less than 1% for larger animals, and many researchers keep developing smaller and smaller devices.”

In the journal Water Biology and Security, Iwata’s team now published a review summarizing the current state of biologging, describing what insights such data has provided so far. So have typhoon forecasts become more accurate, the difference in how turtle species react to plastic waste become evident, illegal fishing been exposed and offshore wind farms become more bird friendly. Iwata says: “This review showed that while biologging alone is insufficient, it can fill in the gaps in existing knowledge. It provides a new type of data that differs from the wide-area environmental information obtained from earth observation satellites and other sources to tackle a broad range of environmental issues.”

In their paper, Iwata and his coauthor write, “The full potential of biologging can only be realized thorough increased global collaboration and data sharing, enabling the integration of data across species, regions, and environmental contexts.” The goal they are working towards is the so-called “Internet of Animals,” which refers to the networked collection of biologging data from a broad range of animals and environments. The main challenges for this are global data availability and the compatibility of different recording standards, which is an area where the Japanese research team advocates for increased collaboration between researchers and data collection platforms.

“If we can promote the sharing of biologging data through this paper, I hope to not only recruit more researchers to this field but also to so open up new angles that we haven’t yet envisioned,” Iwata expresses his ultimate goal. He continues: “Researchers are not experts in social implementation, but in recent years, I have seen various issues being solved by sharing data in a data-driven society. It was an enjoyable task to think of ways to return the power of data to society.”

This research was conducted in collaboration with a researcher from Waseda University.

Kobe University is a national university with roots dating back to the Kobe Higher Commercial School founded in 1902. It is now one of Japan’s leading comprehensive research universities with nearly 16,000 students and nearly 1,700 faculty in 10 faculties and schools and 15 graduate schools. Combining the social and natural sciences to cultivate leaders with an interdisciplinary perspective, Kobe University creates knowledge and fosters innovation to address society’s challenges.