Pongo's Journey
September, 2017: No update from Pongo this month!
April, 2017: Pongo has been a "Cendrawasih homebody” for the entire length of his deployment - never leaving the bay. Interestingly, Pongo’s tag (which also had stopped sending data in October 2016) has recently been pinging us again too. Unfortunately it has not yet successfully sent any new data, but we can see that the tag is trying to ping. This is great news in that it tells me the tag is still “alive” and recording data - and I’m hopeful that we will be able to find Pongo during our big expedition to Cendrawasih in late July/early August and recover and download his tag. Max depth still 768m.
February, 2017: Though venturing all around the bay, including into the deepest parts of the middle of the bay, Pongo has never left Cendrawasih Bay. Since I last updated you, he has increased his depth record to 768m! However, his tag has stopped transmitting since October. We’re not sure what happened here - with two of the other sharks we tagged that spent a lot of time in Kwatisore with the bagans, they managed to so badly fray the antenna’s on their tags (due to interactions with bagans I think) that they could no longer transmit. Again, we’re hopeful to find Pongo in July and download his tag.
August, 2016: He has mostly remained in Cendrawasih Bay since tagging, though moving around a bit. Pongo has now increased his depth record to the deepest of your 5 sharks at 688m! As I noted previously, we did manage to download his tag in May, and my master’s student Megan is working with this data. I've seen some of her recent plots on diving behavior, and it's pretty cool.
June, 2016: Pongo has just been hanging out near Kwatisore bagans - has dived to 256m depth.
April, 2017: Pongo has been a "Cendrawasih homebody” for the entire length of his deployment - never leaving the bay. Interestingly, Pongo’s tag (which also had stopped sending data in October 2016) has recently been pinging us again too. Unfortunately it has not yet successfully sent any new data, but we can see that the tag is trying to ping. This is great news in that it tells me the tag is still “alive” and recording data - and I’m hopeful that we will be able to find Pongo during our big expedition to Cendrawasih in late July/early August and recover and download his tag. Max depth still 768m.
February, 2017: Though venturing all around the bay, including into the deepest parts of the middle of the bay, Pongo has never left Cendrawasih Bay. Since I last updated you, he has increased his depth record to 768m! However, his tag has stopped transmitting since October. We’re not sure what happened here - with two of the other sharks we tagged that spent a lot of time in Kwatisore with the bagans, they managed to so badly fray the antenna’s on their tags (due to interactions with bagans I think) that they could no longer transmit. Again, we’re hopeful to find Pongo in July and download his tag.
August, 2016: He has mostly remained in Cendrawasih Bay since tagging, though moving around a bit. Pongo has now increased his depth record to the deepest of your 5 sharks at 688m! As I noted previously, we did manage to download his tag in May, and my master’s student Megan is working with this data. I've seen some of her recent plots on diving behavior, and it's pretty cool.
June, 2016: Pongo has just been hanging out near Kwatisore bagans - has dived to 256m depth.