Faro OTN Workshop, December 3-5, 2009

Dr. Ron O'Dor describes tagging equipment to workshop participants Photo by Salah Benchirifi, INRH

OTN held a workshop December 3-5, 2009, in Faro, Portugal, to discuss plans to deploy a line of acoustic receivers, to be known as the Gibraltar Curtain, spanning the Strait of Gibraltar, between Spain and Morocco, some time next year. OTN's collaborators on this project will include researchers from the University of Barcelona, Spain, the University of Algarve, Portugal, the Moroccan National Fisheries Research Institute (INRH), and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography.

Over 60 people participated in this workshop. About 20 of these were scientists and graduate students with projects using telemetry from various institutions in countries adjacent to the Gibraltar Curtain. The rest were from the European Erasmus Mundus global student exchange degree program who were interested in the potential of OTN in their home regions.

During the workshop, live cuttlefish and fish were tagged and released in a lagoon. Participants practiced tracking these animals using a directional hydrophone, and an acoustic receiver was put in place to record detections of the animals. Data resulting from this experiment will initiate data exchange for the Gibraltar Curtain between OTN and its Gibraltar partners.

The meeting was funded by the Luso-American Foundation.

Story by Susan Dufault, OTN Headquarters