Checking the Birdweather FAQ, I guess you need to be more detailed on the setup description. For example, if you use a powerbank to power the PUC that is NOT ALWAYS-ON, it may swich-off after some time. So details of your setup may matter.

Caveat, I do not have a PUC, but tried to understand you problem.

It's probably much easier to find a company selling acoustic modems than to try and create your own...very challenging environment to work within. I have about 10 years working with underwater acoustics (as a non-engineer). 

To give you the best advice, I need a bit more information about your specific application. Underwater communication typically relies on acoustic modems because radio waves don't travel well through water. For longer distances, a hybrid solution is often used. This could involve an acoustic modem transmitting data from your underwater sensor to a surface buoy or platform. The buoy could then relay the data to shore using traditional radio communication, such as 900MHz radios (even commercially available options like Ubiquiti radios, depending on distance and line-of-sight). To help me understand your needs and recommend the right approach, could you tell me more about:

Data Rate Requirements: How much data do you need to transmit, and how often?

Range: What is the vertical distance between your sensor and the surface receiver?

Environment: Are you working in shallow or deep water? What is the water temperature, salinity, and expected noise level?

Power Budget: How much power is available for the underwater sensor and modem?

Cost: What is your budget for the acoustic modem system?

Integration: How will you integrate the modem with your sensor and surface receiving system?

Real-time or Delayed: Do you need the data in real-time, or can it be stored and transmitted later?

He compilado esta lista de bibliotecas de referencia acústica!

I've compiled this list of acoustic reference libraries! 

Hi Paul, 

I just remembered another one for the list. @BethClark is taking some really cool environmental readings for seabirds - Gannets - basically to build a picture of their lives in 3D. She talks about it on her blog here.

A few excerpts: 

Electronic devices are attached onto the birds to record their behaviour: GPS, altimeters, accelerometers and dive recorders. The key will be to use multiple loggers on the same bird to record their flights in great detail. The GPS tracking project has been going on Grassholm for a few years now and we are building up a good picture of where they tend to forage.

The altimeters show the height above the sea, which gives us 3D tracks of the birds’ movements – very cool! The higher you are, the further you can see, but the more difficult it is to pick up scents from the sea. We will find out if these 3D help us pick out foraging behaviour and see how they actually find fish (and fishing boats) in a huge and seemingly featureless ocean.

Dive recorders show the timing and depth of the famous torpedo plunge dives, which will let us know when the birds have successfully found a fishing ground.

The accelerometers measure acceleration in 3 directions, showing even a single wing flap. This will help us to measure how much effort the bird are putting in when they travel and forage, which is very important for trying to figure out how they decide where to go. We will also be able to identify other behaviours, such as telling apart high-speed plunge diving from a slower dive made from the surface.

I think altimeters and dive recorders might be new ones for your list. Beth's here on WILDLABS.NET (and has promised a nice case study for our Resources area), so I think she'd be delighted to answer any questions you might have. 

Cheers,

Steph 

Hello again!

An interesting paper exploring the new technologies being used to study cetaceans has a section devoted to what they term high-resolution multisensor tags (page 4).

As with @BethClark 's work above, the questions that arise when studying marine mammals bring another dimension into what information we might require sensors to collect. For example: 

Among cetaceans, there are two suborders: Odontocetes (toothed-whales) and Mysticetes (baleen whales). In general, toothed whales and dolphins use high-frequency acoustics for interanimal communication and feeding. In the marine environment, where sight is limited, sound propagates extremely well and all marine mammals communicate primarily through acoustic cues. Similar to bats, toothed whales and dolphins feed via high-frequency sound production known as echolocation, where acoustic signals reflect off of targets and the returning echoes can be translated into information on the environment or potential prey. For many years, independent passive acoustic recorders have been used to study the vocalizations of marine mammals. However, the incorporation of acoustic recorders (hydrophones) into animal-borne tags has only occurred in the past 20 years (Fletcher, Le Boeuf, Costa, Tyack, & Blackwell, 1996). The information that is recorded on the sensors in these tags (e.g. acoustic, movement) can be used to determine the frequency and acoustic structure of vocal behaviours that occur concomitant with motor behaviour, for example, echolocation signals during feeding events (Madsen, De Soto, Arranz, & Johnson, 2013) or contact calling while diving ( Jensen, Marrero Perez, Johnson, Aguilar Soto, & Madsen, 2011). Echolocation ‘clicks’ and ‘buzzes’ have been used from animal-borne tags to study the foraging behaviour of a wide range of odontocetes, from the small harbour porpoise, Phocoena phocoena, to the largest, the sperm whale (Fais et al., 2015; Wisniewska et al., 2015). This information has provided critical data on the feeding depths, frequency, timing and prey types targeted by different species and the behaviours associated with foraging (Johnson, de Soto & Madsen, 2009). These insights into feeding behaviour have recently been used to help determine foraging performance and foraging ecology (Watwood, Miller, Johnson, Madsen, & Tyack, 2006), as well as the energetic consequences of disturbing this behaviour (Miller et al., 2009). These new data products are ripe for linking to conservation efforts such as the individual and population consequences of human activities disrupting these behaviours (e.g. the use of naval sonar and seismic surveys). We explore below the tools produced, as well as new ones in development, to forge these links.

You have already identified sound in your original list, but I think the use of hydrophones with tags is an interesting addition - an example that didn't immediately spring to mind (at least for me), when I thought about the list. 

Cheers, 

Steph 

In Press: Nowacek, D. P., et al., Studying cetacean behaviour: new technological approaches and conservation applications, Animal Behaviour (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2016.07.019

Hi Both of you, 

Just a quick note now. Very interesting articles and topics found and discussed here. In my work with biophysical aspects of cheetahs I will review these things you have written. Thank you very much. Followed here from the sidelines  

                            BR Henrik 

Depending on what you really need, you might have different options. I don't think collar/bracelet for great apes is currently resolved reliably, and could pose risks to the animals. Implantable transmitters are one option but more invasive. I think Chris Walzer (currently at WCS) has done some initial work on implanting orangutans (or gibbons), but that was quite some years ago. Others might have done it since as well. FWIW we have implanted captive chimpanzees with subcutaneous transmitters for other reasons and some have removed/damaged it, so that's a risk. Intraabdominal might be another (though even more invasive) option. 

Is  visual observation an option? This is well used in many species, though might be very costly/labour intensive. I have been involved in a project with howler and spider monkey where this has been used successfully, happy to put you in touch with them. 

If your questions is primarily absence/presence of certain individuals, you could also try DNA based methods? And someone suggested below individual ID from video/pictures, this has been done in captive great apes, so it is an option, but you still need to get the shots in the first instance, so probably not many advantages over manual monitoring methods. 

Our city-neighbours Robotto are a Drone AI-software company and have an ongoing animal tracking projects in Thailand, Australia, and Greenland (probably more by now) in co-op with WWF, using drones. 

Give them a look! I know Kenneth, their CEO, pretty well so can match you two.

A rough explanation of how the tracking process happens is:
A forest ranger brings a suitcase with a drone to a watchpoint, pilots the drone around the area for 30-50 minutes while monitoring detections real-time on the provided screen.

Have seen it live in Thailand, it was impressive! :)

In a recent call with researchers in Thailand. They have mentioned that they use passive chip readers to log data about chipped animals as they pass by.