In a new paper published in Frontiers in Marine Science, MegaMove members, pioneer the discussion on the importance of combining animal tracks and records of human activities at-sea at a global scale.

By combining these records alongside environmental data and capitalising on existing and emerging technologies, near real-time diagnostics of risks and threats to marine megafauna can become available. Such a process will eliminate the temporal delay between data collection and action, and allow taxa-specific risk assessments and conservation strategies to be generated more rapidly.

Our ability to track and monitor animal movement in the marine environment is now more advanced than ever, with collected data being used to inform conservation measures across local, national and regional scales. On a global scale, however, our capacity to maximise the value and impact of tracking data is currently limited by an inability to access it in real-time, and in a globally-standardised manner. MegaMove is set out to address this major gap!