Biologging as a potential platform for resolving ocean environmental issues and threats: Towards the development of the Internet of Animals

Abstract

Biologging is a method that utilizes animal-borne devices to study the behavioural ecology, physiology, and surrounding environment of animals. This is the Lagrangian observation method, which assigns a coordinate system origin to each animal, making the biologging unique among observation platforms. This study reviews biologging as a new tool for understanding the ocean by combining other observation methods, and proposes strategies for applying biologging technology to address various marine issues through relevant policies. Attempts to resolve marine issues using biologging are described, including ocean warming, weather forecasting, marine debris, marine chemical pollution, anthropogenic noise, preservation of marine protected areas, bycatch from fisheries, and anthropogenic disturbance of habitats used by marine top predators. While biologging alone is insufficient to resolve marine issues, it can complement other Lagrangian platforms such as drifting buoys and Eulerian remote sensing, enhancing the predictive accuracy of models, and filling existing gaps in knowledge. The Internet of Animals (IoA), which is a derivative concept of the Internet of Things (IoT), will be a future solution that collects a range of data from inaccessible ocean from animals equipped with devices through a network, making open data access crucial. Conclusively, we present research examples and potential methods involving biologging that will guide the formulation of sustainable ocean management policies.