The Australian Acoustic Tagging and Monitoring System (AATAMS) recently organised the 2007 Vemco and acoustic telemetry workshop. This 3-day event was held within the Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS) on the 21-23 of November 2007 and attracted over 55 researchers from all Australian States and Territories.

A combination of acoustic telemetry experts and scientists using this technology for the first time attended the workshop during which the Australian community presented talks focusing on acoustic telemetry equipment, array design, deployment methods, and analytical solutions. Sixteen talks and three posters were presented along with talks from two Vemco staffs that flew in from Canada especially to attend this meeting.

Rob Harcourt and Charlie Huveneers opened the workshop by presenting information on the AATAMS project and its implications for the Australian community. The locations of the AATAMS curtains were revealed as well as a summary of the AATAMS user registry that combines over 100 researchers within 34 institutions, and totals over 1000 acoustic receivers, including 660 already deployed and recording tagged marine organisms all around the Australian coast. Alistair Hobday from CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research opened the second day of the workshop by presenting a plenary talk on the estimation of detection probabilities for linear acoustic arrays. Throughout the three days, Dale Webber and Greg McKinnon presented information about the Vemco equipment including the rational for the single frequency telemetry, code maps, data rate (collision) and false detection, detection performance, range limits, array design, and the current and new products such as the VUE software, V6 tags, VR3-UWM, and VR4-Global.

AATAMS would like to thank NSW DPI, Vemco and SIMS for sponsoring the event, and hope that future events will be as successful.

Pdfs of each presentation can be downloaded here