News & Views
Welcome to Issue No. 5 of the International Bio-Logging Society Newsletter!
Our newsletter is growing into a true community effort, written by our community,
for our community. Over the past three months, the bio-logging world has been buzzing with activity, from congresses and conferences to field sites. We share discoveries, ideas, and push the boundaries of bio-logging science to support global conservation and management.
In this Issue:
Bio-Logging Bulletin from our Correspondents
| By Viola Panigada, PhD student in Marine Science and Conservation, Duke University, USA Viola attended the One Ocean Science Congress (OOSC), a UNOC3 Special Event dedicated to Science (3-6 June, Nice, France) | |
| Viola says: “At OOSC, scientists and early-career ocean professionals from all over the world presented their research to be used as scientific background for UNOC3. There, I had the chance to present my work on fin whale movements and habitat use in the Mediterranean Sea, which we tracked using satellite telemetry. This was part of my BSc thesis, and I am furthering research on the topic for my PhD.” | |
 | |
| Several research vessels were in Nice as part of the UNOC3 Flotilla, including the Malizia Explorer — a new sailing boat dedicated to science, communication and outreach. After its christening in Monaco during UNOC, I took part in the Malizia’s first mission in Dénia, south of Spain, for a whale tracking fieldwork with Tethys Research Institute and the Valencia Polytechnic University. Every year, in June-July, fin whales are observed passing through the area on their way out of the Mediterranean Sea, towards the Atlantic Ocean.To learn more about their outbound movements and inform conservation measures accordingly, we have been tracking fin whales in the past couple of years, attaching small satellite transmitters on their dorsal fins. This year, we have deployed three tags — in addition to others from previous years, and all three individuals have already left the Mediterranean towards profitable feeding grounds in the North Atlantic Ocean. Looking forward to following these animals along and learning more about their movement patterns! | |
| By Charlotte Lorand, PhD student at Faculty of Applied Ecology, Agricultural Sciences and Biotechnology, Campus Evenstad, University of Inland Norway Charlotte attended the “Wolves Across Borders” conference (2-6 June, Lunteren, the Netherlands) | |
 | In early June I joined the 2025 Wolves Across Borders conference in Lunteren, the Netherlands – a young international conference gathering wolves’ specialists from across the world to discuss new research and current interconnected problematics. Movement and behavior have always formed a core part of research on wolf ecology, and it was exciting to witness how different projects handle monitoring challenges and use location data to answer ecological and societal questions as diverse as home ranges and habitat use, activity patterns, pack dynamics, interspecific interactions, or patterns of livestock depredation. |
| As the Scandinavian Wolf-Human Interaction Project, we presented fine-scale methods based on acceleration data, aiming at field assessments of energetic use and instant behavior recognition. These talks attracted a lot of attention and interest from attendants, who seemed eager to integrate such methods into their existing workflow, when compatible with their monitoring devices. There seems to be definite interest in obtaining detailed indicators from biologging devices, either to reframe or delve deeper into the most pressing questions in wolf ecology, and ample room for integrating recent biologging advances into this approach. | |
Tales from the Wild: Bio-Loggers in Action
Tales from the Wild: Bio-Loggers in Action
| Hello! My name is Alex McInturf, and I’m a research associate in the Big Fish Lab at Oregon State University (OSU) and co-coordinator of the Irish Basking Shark Group. Recently, I’ve been working with a team of incredible collaborators at OSU, Trinity College Dublin and Stanford University to learn more about the behaviors and biomechanics of basking sharks. Basking sharks are the world’s second-largest fish, often reaching over 8 m in length, and one of three filter-feeding sharks. As such, they offer a unique challenge to study. They cannot be lured to the boat via attractants like bait, and we certainly can’t bring them onboard. So, we have to get creative when it comes to collecting data, deploying tags from the boat as the sharks swim by and using GoPros and drones to obtain sex and length, respectively. An even bigger challenge? These animals are globally endangered and can only be found seasonally in specific coastal “hotspots” worldwide. Luckily, there is one place where numbers appear to be stable or even increasing: Ireland. |