Russia Loses Contact With Satellite Containing Gecko Experiment

July 26, 2014

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Russian space officials said that they have lost contact with a satellite containing geckos participating in an experiment to see what impact microgravity will have on their biology and their sexual behaviors.

According to Jonathan O’Callaghan of the Daily Mail, a total of five lizards (four males and one female) were sent into space on a Photon-M satellite on July 19. Now, less than a week later, ground control has confirmed that the probe is no longer responding to commands, jeopardizing the mission.

“The two-month mission was planned to monitor by video how well the geckos sexually reproduce in space before returning them safely to Earth,” O’Callaghan said. “Following the launch, the satellite was failing to respond to commands to start its engine and move to a higher orbit… [but] the rest of its systems are operating nominally.”

“The equipment which is working in automatic mode, and in particular the experiment with the geckos is working according to the program,” added Oleg Voloshin, a spokesperson with the Russia’s Institute of Medico-Biological Problems, which is in charge of the experiment.

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Scientists Use Satellites, Underwater Robot to Study Atlantic Sturgeon Migrations

May 3, 2013 — More than a century ago, an estimated 180,000 female Atlantic sturgeon arrived from the coast in the spring to spawn in the Delaware River and fishermen sought their caviar as a lucrative export to Europe. Overfishing contributed to steep population declines, however, and today numbers have dwindled to fewer than 300 adults. 

Researchers at the University of Delaware and Delaware State University are using satellites, acoustic transmitters, an underwater robot and historical records to pinpoint the ocean conditions that the fish prefer during migrations -- and potentially help fishermen avoid spots where they might unintentionally catch this endangered species. 

"There are specific, observable waters in the ocean that we hypothesize are more associated with this species," said Matthew Oliver, assistant professor of oceanography in UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. 

Oliver and graduate student Matt Breece compared prior years' satellite data on ocean temperature and chlorophyll levels with locations where sturgeon were previously tracked migrating along the Mid-Atlantic coast. Based on patterns they found between the datasets, they are now using current satellite information to make rough daily predictions on where the sturgeon are migrating. 

Continued: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130503230319.htm

95% population decline in European eels spurs tracking research – more news

By attaching satellite and data storage tags to about 600 eels from different places in Europe the project scientists were hoping to map the route of the spawning eels.

Eels tagged to help scientists understand migration

January 2013. Nobody knows the underlying biological mechanisms of the European eel's migration. Thanks to an EU-funded research project called eeliad, now about to reach completion, biologists have revealed some of its secrets, including a better understanding of its biology and migration route.

All European eels living from Northern Africa to Iceland are believed to migrate thousands of kilometres to the Sargasso Sea (The Sargasso Sea lies in the middle of the North Atlantic) to spawn. Findings of newly-hatched eel larvae in the Sargasso Sea strongly support this theory. But no eggs or adult eels have ever been caught in the area.

600 eels tagged
By attaching satellite and data storage tags to about 600 eels from different places in Europe the project scientists were hoping to map the route of the spawning eels. "We could track the satellite tags as far away as the Azores. This suggests that the eels take a different route to the Sargasso Sea than previously thought. It seems as if they're saving energy by hitching a ride on the Azores Current," Kim Aarestrup tells youris.com. He is a senior scientist at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), in Silkeborg and one of the leading researchers behind the satellite tagging.

"Very little is known of the oceanic part of the eel's life history," says Martin Castonguay, an eel expert and research scientist at The Maurice Lamontagne Institute in Mont-Joli, Canada, adding: "The most important thing the eeliad project provided is that it gave us the first observations of adult eel migrations in the open Atlantic Ocean for distances up to 1,300 km from the release point." Although he has not been a part of the project, Castonguay believes it has been "very successful".

Among other things the project scientists also tested the spawning ecology of the eels by using genetic research, combined with a fisheries biology technique for tracking fish movement called otolith microchemistryand modelling methods. The analyses were undertaken both on eel larvae collected in the Sargasso Sea and on glass eels collected from the coastline of Europe and North Africa. "Our genetic research showed that the eels living all across Europe mate randomly. This is very unusual for animals that are so widely distributed. It strongly indicates that the European eels are spawning in the Sargasso Sea and nowhere else," says Thomas Dammals, a research scientist at DTU who was involved with the genetic research in the project.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/eel-migration.html