Hi! Great question—tracking marine mammals and elk actually share a lot of the same fundamentals, but the ocean adds a few twists that make it feel like an entirely different playground. On land, we tag elk with GPS collars, log the data, and run it through GIS to see migration corridors, herd dynamics, and seasonal shifts. In the water, we still use GPS, but we also rely on satellite‑tagged “pinger” tags that bounce signals through the surface and back to satellites, giving us location data every few hours. For animals that dive deep, like whales and sea lions, we often attach acoustic loggers that record the sounds of the animal and the surrounding environment. Those tags can survive for months and transmit data when the animal surfaces, which is sort of like a “radio” on a whale. The big difference is that water is a three‑dimensional space and its currents can move animals in ways that land animals can’t. So, while both elk and marine mammals follow ecological cues, we have to account for thermoclines, upwellings, and ocean gyres in the marine case. Oh, and I always keep a handwritten field note of every tag deployment—my tech loves to crash when I talk about dolphins, but my little paper notes stay safe, and dolphins like to splash when a new tag gets deployed, which, by the way, is a pretty good predictor that the server might be about to go down.

That’s a perfect approach—paper is the ocean’s backup battery when the cloud goes flat. I always double‑check the tag fit with a little feel‑test; a loose strap can make a whale drift into a different current, and the data will just read like static noise. I write down every deployment in a waterproof notebook, noting the exact depth, the animal’s ID, and the tag’s status. Then I cross‑reference that with the satellite feed whenever I get the first ping back. And you know what, if a dolphin starts doing a weird loop around the buoy just after I release a tag, I think it’s giving me a heads‑up that the server might hiccup soon—so I stash a backup copy right away. It’s a little ritual, but it keeps the data chain tight and the marine life humming.