Issue 11, March 2010

A Tale of Two Receivers

With close to 10 years experience deploying hundreds of VEMCO receivers within coastal oceans, rivers and estuaries, Kintama has inevitably lost a few along the way. While some successfully avoid recapture, most are actually recovered.

In early October 2006, Kintama laid an experimental Cascade Head line in Oregon, a location that can experience very severe weather conditions. This VR2 array consisted of 27 receivers reaching out to the edge of the continental shelf in over 200m of water. When the array was recovered in May 2007, it was discovered that three VR2s were missing.

While one has not been recovered - at least not yet - two of the receivers decided to separate to try and avoid recapture with one heading north and the other south-west. However, you can drift but you can't always hide.

One receiver was found at Long Beach near Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Its data was successfully downloaded yielding 278 detections from 26 unique tag codes.

In March 2008, Kintama received a call from a gentleman in Hawaii to advise that he found two orange float balls attached to instruments on Kahuku beach in Oahu. The VR2 was in good condition with the LED still flashing and only a few barnacles and other marine growth on it. Kintama was able to download the unit once it returned to Nanaimo from its 4000km journey but it contained no detections.

The Long Beach receiver is now re-deployed in the Fraser River where it is picking up sturgeon tags, and will be detecting Chilko sockeye later this spring. The Hawaii receiver is in storage awaiting its next mission.