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Reading the sea-turtle tracking data

Four tagged turtles produced 1,406 satellite fixes over 17 months and about 3,092 km of track.

Intermediate 1 min read turtlestelemetryArgosKenya

The Coastal Kenya Programme tagged sea turtles with satellite transmitters between May 2017 and October 2018. Atlas holds:

  • 1,414 location fixes from Argos/GPS (1,406 with valid timestamps) from 4 turtles.
  • Movement tracks joining consecutive fixes, about 3,092 km in total.

How the numbers are made. Each fix has a position, a time and a method (Argos satellite positioning or GPS). Atlas computes distance along each track on the WGS 84 ellipsoid; the source's own length fields are in degrees and are not used. Timestamps are assumed to be UTC, which is standard for telemetry but is recorded as an assumption.

Use it for showing where turtles feed and travel relative to mangroves, seagrass and fishing grounds. Do not treat four animals as representative of a population.

Privacy of sensitive wildlife. Anti-poaching and some species records are restricted to the super admin; the turtle layer is public because it is research telemetry.

Limits. A small sample; Argos fixes carry location error of hundreds of metres to kilometres.

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