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Tag and Release

MIT-WHOI Joint Program student Nicholas Macfarlane applies a DTAG to a pilot whale in the Strait of Gibraltar. The digital acoustic recording tag was developed at WHOI in 1999 by Mark Johnson and Peter Tyack. It attaches to a whale’s back with suction cups for up to 16 hours, recording information such as speed and depth, as well as audio, including every sound the whale is subjected to and every click and whistle the animal makes. The tag is programmed to pop off after a predetermined amount of time then floats to the surface, where researchers retrieve it and download data.(Photo by Frants Jensen, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. This research was performed under NMFS Marine Mammal Permit number 14241)