Acoustic Gates

The Acoustic Gates project started in 2012 with the original intentions of gating Long Island, the NY bight, and NJ waters with acoustic receivers to monitor Sturgeon activity. Since then, the project has evolved to focusing on Long Island and the NY bight area to monitor multiple species of teleosts and elasmobranchs. More specifically, the project has receivers in the Rockaways, Jones Beach area, Fire Island, Montauk, the Great South Bay, and the Peconic Bay.

The current species we are tracking are as follows:

• Atlantic Cod, Atlantic Sturgeon, Black sea bass, Blacktip Shark, Bluefish, Clearnose Skate, Dusky shark, False Albacore, Little Skate, Monkfish, Northern Kingfish, Northern Sea Robin, Ocean Pout, Roughtail stingray, Sand Tiger Shark, Sandbar Shark, Scup, Shortfin mako, Smooth Dogfish, Southern Stingray, Spiny Butterfly Ray, Spiny Dogfish, Striped Bass, Summer flounder, Tautog, Common Thresher Shark, Weakfish, White Shark, Winter flounder, Winter Skate

The newest addition to the gates project involves the use of real time telemetry around Montauk to monitor shark presence and absence in high surf traffic zones. There are currently 88 receivers deployed for this project and over 1000 fish tagged. This project is funded by NYDEC and supports multiple students in their graduate studies.

Active Students: Tatum Eigenberger

 

“The Peconic Bay array began in 2022 as part of an exploratory acoustic tagging study of weakfish to better understand the migration habits of the species and the use of the estuary for weakfish spawning. This study will also use data from the other arrays in the Acoustic Gates Project to evaluate movement patterns of weakfish.” -M.S. Student Tatum Eigenberger