How tiny satellites are tracking marine wildlife | Jake Levenson | TEDxFoggyBottom

Key Concepts

• Animal Telemetry: The use of technology to track and monitor animal movements and behavior.
• Small Satellites (CubeSats): Compact, standardized satellites that are relatively inexpensive to build and launch, enabling widespread access to space technology.
• Open Standards: Protocols and specifications that are publicly available, allowing for interoperability and innovation across different systems and users.
• Time of Arrival (ToA): A satellite-based tracking technology where the animal's tag transmits a signal to the satellite, which then calculates the animal's position.
• Traditional Satellite Tagging: Older technology that relies on the animal's tag transmitting to satellites, which then calculate the location based on signal reception times.
• Spatial Inaccuracy: The degree of error in a location fix provided by a tracking system.
• Crowdsourcing Challenge: A method of soliciting a wide range of potential solutions to a problem by engaging a large, diverse group of people.

The Challenge of Ocean Protection

The speaker, a marine biologist, highlights the inherent difficulty in protecting ocean environments and creatures due to their dynamic nature. Unlike static entities like buildings or artworks, the ocean is constantly changing on various timescales, from hourly to millennia. This dynamism poses a significant challenge for traditional protection methods, such as drawing boundaries or fences, as the environment and the entities within it are in perpetual motion.

Reasons for Protection

The speaker outlines three primary reasons for protecting things, including ocean features and creatures:

1. Health: Protecting natural habitats, like the Amazon rainforest, contributes to cleaner air and water by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen.
2. Economy: Natural attractions, such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park, generate substantial tourism revenue.
3. Legacy: Preserving items of cultural and aesthetic importance, like the Mona Lisa, ensures they can be appreciated by future generations.

The Ocean's Dynamic Nature

The ocean's constant flux is illustrated by several examples:

• Fishermen's observations: Fish can appear in large numbers one moment and disappear the next.
• Whale migration: Whales travel thousands of miles across international borders to find feeding grounds.
• Oil spills: Shifting currents can rapidly spread oil spills.

This dynamic environment makes traditional "fencing" or boundary-based protection ineffective, as the elements within and around these boundaries are constantly changing.

The Promise of Space Technology

The speaker's journey to leveraging space technology for ocean protection began with an observation during a long commute. Hearing about the accessibility of small satellites, particularly their use by high school students with NASA, sparked an idea.

Attributes of Small Satellites (CubeSats)

Small satellites possess three key attributes that make them revolutionary for tracking and monitoring:

1. Open Standards: This allows anyone to contribute and use the technology, fostering innovation and lowering barriers to entry. This is analogous to how open web coding standards allow various browsers to display web pages correctly.
2. Small Size: Often comparable to the size of a coffee cup, these satellites are significantly smaller than traditional ones.
3. Relatively Inexpensive Launch Costs: Due to their small size, they can be launched as secondary payloads on other missions, making space access more affordable. Dozens can be launched simultaneously for a reasonable cost.

The projected growth of the small satellite industry, with an estimated 18,000 in orbit by 2030, indicated a potential solution for the widespread coverage needed for animal tracking.

Overcoming the Accuracy Problem

Initial outreach to NASA led to a collaboration, but a new challenge emerged: the accuracy problem. Widespread coverage is useless if the tracking system is inaccurate. To address this, a crowdsourcing challenge was launched.

Crowdsourcing and its Outcomes

Crowdsourcing allows for rapid iteration and the solicitation of a wide range of ideas, though it also exposes the process to unconventional suggestions (e.g., "tell whales to use a cell phone"). Despite some unusual ideas, the challenge yielded valuable advancements in animal telemetry science, most notably the concept of Time of Arrival (ToA).

Evolution of Animal Tracking Technology

The speaker contrasts the new ToA technology with the limitations of traditional satellite tagging methods.

Traditional Satellite Tagging (1980s onwards)

• Method: Attaching satellite transmitters to animals.
• Flaws:
  • Significant Location Error: Locations could be off by up to two kilometers (equivalent to 20 football fields or the length of the Las Vegas Strip). This inaccuracy makes it difficult to inform conservation efforts, especially in smaller areas like the Caribbean island of Dominica, where tracking a hawkbill turtle could place it in either the Atlantic Ocean or the Caribbean Sea.
  • Tag Size: Tags were too large to be attached to 68% of vertebrates, leaving vast amounts of wildlife unstudied.
  • Slow Location Fixes: It could take up to four minutes to obtain a location fix, which is problematic for marine animals that surface for brief periods.
• Current Status: Shockingly, this older system is still in use today, even in advanced devices like the "Fitbit for whales." These tags require recovery, and their large size and slow data acquisition create a stressful and expensive process for scientists.

Time of Arrival (ToA) Technology

ToA represents a paradigm shift in animal tracking.

• Mechanism: Unlike GPS, which listens for satellite signals, ToA involves the animal's tag transmitting a signal to the satellite. The satellite then computes the animal's position.
• Advantages:
  • Near Instant Location Fixes: By knowing the speed of light, positions can be calculated almost instantly.
  • Tiny, Lightweight Trackers: Tags can weigh less than a paperclip, enabling tracking of species from birth throughout their entire life cycle. This is crucial for understanding the life stages of animals like sea turtles, whose early years are largely a mystery.
  • Dramatically Lower Costs: Traditional tags cost thousands of dollars, while ToA tags cost only a few dollars.
  • Reduced Spatial Inaccuracy: The error margin has been reduced from two kilometers to just a couple of meters.

Broader Implications of ToA and Small Tags

The advancements in ToA and miniaturized tracking technology extend far beyond marine biology.

Public Safety Applications

• Life Jacket Tracking: Imagine every life jacket on a ship equipped with a small, nickel-sized tracking tag that doesn't require proximity to a cell phone.
• Personal Item Tracking: ToA could enable tracking of lost wallets, stolen cars, or even children's mittens.

Revolutionizing Understanding of Animal Movement

The ability to track animals with unprecedented accuracy and at a lower cost will fundamentally change our understanding of animal migration, behavior, and ecological roles worldwide.

Conclusion

Eight years after being stuck in traffic with a question about using space technology for animal tracking, the speaker concludes that the field has moved beyond mere tracking. The advancements are actively changing how we protect the ocean, its inhabitants, and ultimately, the planet. The ocean's constant movement is no longer an insurmountable barrier to protection, as new technologies allow us to move with it.