FACT FAQs

Originally we were the Florida Atlantic Coast Telemetry Network but have expanded to include members throughout Florida as well as Georgia, South Carolina, the Bahamas, and Caribbean.  While some of our earliest tracking studies began on the Florida east coast, many species we study are highly migratory (including some we thought didn’t move so much) so coordination and data sharing with researchers over a wider region has become essential.  All members are co-equals and many also partner with the Atlantic Cooperative Telemetry Network to our north and the iTAG Network in the northern Gulf of Mexico. We’ve kept the acronym for consistency (and because it appeals to our scientific nature) but we may change our name in the future to better represent all our members.

SECOORA is our regional arm of the Integrated Ocean Observation System (IOOS) and has a mandate to coordinate and disseminate marine data and forecasts for defense, commerce, and navigational purposes. While the FACT Network is an independent research group, our products can be valuable to SECOORA customers. As such, SECOORA has graciously offered to host and help develop the FACT Network website.

Our researchers often use more than one tagging technique for assessing animal behavior but acoustic telemetry has advantages over other methods. For example, it provides more movement detail than traditional external tags that rely on physical recapture of a marked animal. It also works much better in salt water than radio telemetry, and can be used on smaller species than bulky satellite transmitters. Its main limitation is that our transmitters must be in range of submerged acoustic receivers (listening stations) to be detected. This is why our efforts to use compatible equipment, coordinate receiver locations, and share animal detection data are so vital. By pooling our resources, we can answer bigger questions.

Active telemetry generally refers to the technique of continuously following a tagged animal through its environment, typically by a sleep-deprived researcher with a portable receiver in a boat. This approach provides highly detailed estimates of animal movement but for short (~1-3 day) periods. Passive (or autonomous) acoustic telemetry uses transmitters that ping less frequently but have a much longer battery life, and are detected by submerged stationary receivers. This strategy allows researchers to answer new questions regarding seasonal habitat preferences, coastal migrations, and survival. And sleep in a little longer.

Our researchers primarily use Innovasea acoustic receivers and transmitters.

Our transmitter frequency (typically 69 kHz) is well above the hearing range of most fish and sea turtle species – and humans as well. Transmitters can be heard by many marine mammals that are in the vicinity of a transmitter. But our tags briefly “ping” once every 2-3 minutes on average and there is no evidence they are detrimental to marine life.

Members in the FACT Network use an online system that matches detections to tags across the FACT, ACT-MATOS, Migramar, ATAP and OTN Networks. All efforts are made to identify tag owners, even if they are outside the networks. If you think your tags might have been detected by receivers in the FACT Network, please email data@thefactnetwork.org.

Surprise! Anglers occasionally discover acoustic transmitters inside fish they’ve harvested. If you find a transmitter lacking researcher contact information, email the manufacturer printed on the tag (for example Innovasea) and provide them with the ID code printed on the tag. The more information you can provide on the animal the better! We would love to hear where you caught it (don’t worry we won’t share your secret fishing spots), any measurements you took, and photos! The manufacturer should then reach out to the researcher. Transmitters are expensive enough that they are sometimes reused where possible, and many researchers offer rewards. Because extra tags gives us extra excuses to go fishing!