It has been a busy summer here at TOPP HQ!  As we approach the completion of the international Census of Marine Life, our team has been hard at work finalizing the analytical tools that we are using to combine the whole TOPP dataset into a cohesive whole - allowing us to perform analyses on tracks from multiple different species, using different types of electronic tags.  As of now, TOPP scientists have deployed over 4,300 tags on 23 different species of marine predators, producing more than 265,000 days of tracking data (and counting)!  In just the past couple of days these numbers have continued to grow, as Stanford graduate student Aaron Spares is currently in the Gulf of Alaska putting out tags on salmon sharks.  These include both acoustic tags and SPOT tags - which allow us to follow the sharks in near-real time.  (Click here to view the Live Access Server where the real-time data are shown.)

One of the hopes for TOPP, and all of the Census projects, is that the lessons from each of the field projects would be expanded to other regions of the world.  For TOPP this idea has taken the form of a new program called "Global Tagging of Pelagic Predators" or GTOPP.  This program will allow collaborators from all over the globe, tagging all different kinds of marine animals, to make use of the data management and analytical tools we've developed over the past decade.  They can also combine their data with tracks from other researchers, as well as with oceanographic datasets collected at the same time and place.

One of the first examples of the GTOPP collaboration happened just a few weeks ago when Dr. Eric Hoffmayer of the University of Southern Mississippi joined forces with ocean explorer Dr. Sylvia Earle to tag whale sharks in the Gulf of Mexico, in the vicnity of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  You can follow developments on the new GTOPP website at www.gtopp.org.