12.03.2017

Report from the Meeting of the Advisory Board in September 2016

The European Aquatic Animal Telemetry Network –

Dr. Jan Reubens University of Gent/Belgium

Fresh winds from Belgium!

Jan Reubens of the University of Gent presented the European Aquatic Animal Telemetry Network (EAATN).

The guideline of the meeting of the Advisory Board in Siegburg was the transregional and transnational exchange of information about fish telemetry.

To the great surprise of participants as well as organizers this concept has been put into action already to a large extent in Belgium.

This approach is extremely important for migratory fish species. The diadromous migratory species at least (migrating between fresh and salt water) are known to regularly leave the main area of fish monitoring while migrating and there is little data available on their further migrations routes.

The approach of a "European Telemetry Data Network" could be a quantum leap when it comes to answering questions about the migratory behavior of individual fish and the factors that take influence on it.

According to Jan Reubens an array of transmitters has been installed in the Belgian part of the North Sea with the objective to track cod migration. This way the development of the cod population should have been investigated. An interesting discovery was that cod actually aggregate around offshore windmills. Even more surprising was the scientific finding that cod spend winters in the Schelde estuary. A fact that according to Jan Reubens had been known to anglers already much longer...

196 acoustic listening stations (ALS) have been installed in Fresh and Sea Waters in and around Belgium, being able to watch a great number of fish species while migrating.

Apart from that the EAATN communicates with the Canada based global platform called „Ocean Tracking Network (OTN)“.

At this time the network is based on data that have been generated with the acoustic telemetry technology of the Canadian company Vemco. Jan Reubens pointed out though that the network is also open to other sources of data also from other projects.

The advantages are obvious: A European Eel for example was tracked from the Dutch part of the Dollart (mouth of River Ems) right to the mouth of River Schelde in Belgium (400km).

Without a telemetry network this migration would have remained concealed like probably most of the others.

This integrative approach also offers a good opportunity for the many migratory fishes projects to gain additional information about migration routes of the fish especially outside their actual project area.

Projects that are interested in cooperation with the EAATN may contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. directly.

Please find the complete presentation hier.

An overview of all presentations can be found hier.