Study on behavior of aquatic animals using visual telemetry

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The visual data storage tag was installed with a complementary metal-oxide-silicon charge-coupled device (CMOS CCD) that took 100 black-and-white pictures with 28000 pixels and stored them in a 1 mega-byte flush memory. The dimension of the tag is 92 x 40 x 28 mm^3, weighed ca. 200g in air and ca. 18g in water. It has an IrDA interface to transfer pictures to a personal computer. A prototype model has capacity to 100 m pressure and was timer-controlled to take pictures every one-hour. The magnetic field sensor accelerometer has a magneto-resistive effect (MR) sensor and three accelerometers in it. The MR sensor detects 3D magnetic field to transform into 3D direction data. All the signals of the MR sensors and the accelerometers were converted by A/D converter to 12-bit digital data controlled by a microprocessor inside the tag. The dimension is 54 mm 0 x 178 mm with ca.1500g in the air and ca. lOOOg in water. We conducted the first field tests of these tags attached to sea turtles in Thailand.Our final goal is to develop new tag types applicable to fish tracking. However, the prototypes of the tags were too large to be attached on fish. Therefore, we conducted the field test of the tags using adult sea turtles in the Sea Turtle Conservation Station belonging to the Department of Fisheries of Thai government. The Station was located at the Mannai Island in the Gulf of Thailand about 200 km eastward far from Bangkok. The station was founded in 1972 and was the center for the sea turtle research in the Gulf of Thailand.We also conducted to observe behaviors of turban shells and abalones using CCD-video camera system.