Understanding the impact of aquatic thermal structure on the performance of fish telemetry technology

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Fish telemetry is an important new tool that is being used to advance and improve conservation and management of fishes in lakes and coastal regions by providing information on behaviour, habitat use, and population dynamics. One prominent example of wide-spread use of this technology in the Great Lakes is the GLATOS array, which connects 190+ Canadian and American investigators with a pooled database from over 50+ projects, documenting 8000+ fish tagged across 39 species and with 150+ million tag detections. The industrial partner InnovaSea Systems Canada Inc manufacture fish tracking devices that are marketed under the brandname "Vemco". Vemco is a major world-wide brand of acoustic telemetry equipment, and a crucial part of their reputation relies on providing accurate guidance to their users of the typical detection range of their devices. The speed of sound in lakes is primarily a function of temperature, so the seasonal thermalstratification in the Great Lakes represents the strongest speed of sound gradients in any aquatic system. These speed of sound gradients can act the refract sound waves (via Snell's law), leading to greater divergence of acoustic signal, and hence more rapid attenuation. The partner is faced with a problem in that they lack theoretical knowledge of how strong thermal stratification in lakes can influence detection range, and hence are unable to give guidance on how their users should design detection arrays. Knowledge generated through the research will assist the partner in further refining the critical guidance they give for how users design and test their field arrays, help users understand their arrays strengths and weaknesses, and enable the partner to help users make management decisions that help the Canadian economy.