Receiver maintenance in Svalbard

Our team recently completed a successful field trip to Svalbard and Isfjorden as part of this year’s annual receiver maintenance campaign. The Arctic receiver network was established in 2023 through the NICE project and has since provided valuable insight into the movement and distributions of aquatic species in and around Isfjorden.

The network has detected key species such as Arctic charr, Atlantic salmon, pink salmon and Atlantic cod, confirming its potential as a powerful tool for monitoring ecosystem dynamics in Arctic waters. During this year’s trip we managed to locate and recover almost all acoustic release receiver units in the system. The receivers were retrieved,

downloaded data, changed batteries and redeployed back into the system.

The recently funded ROPES project will allow a significant expansion of our species monitoring, and by tracking additional key species, we expect to gain a more comprehensive understanding of species interactions, migration patterns and habitat use in the rapidly changing Arctic.

This work was funded by the Norwegian Research Council through the NICE (NFR 134561) and ROPES (NFR 358617) projects.