Hydrodynamic Behavior of Pop-Up Satellite Archival Tags (PSAT) Subject to Vortices

Pop-up Satellite Archival Tags (PSATs) are a combination of satellite and archival tags used by marine biologists to collect large scale movement and behavioral data of large pelagic life for up to two years [1]. However, current commercial PSATs have an unusually high failure rate when tagged on tuna and cost upwards of $4000, making it both difficult and expensive to collect data [14]. Upon investigation, the top two failure modes of tuna-affixed PSATs have been identified as drag from movement/tissue healing and pressure cycling [14]. Current commercial PSAT manufacturers do not account for the vortices shed by fish when testing their designs— a large oversight that could account for their high failure rate [15]. The work herein determined the effects of vortex shedding on PSAT hydrodynamic behavior, used these results to inform the design of novel PSAT body shapes, and conducted a head-to-head comparison of these designs with existing commercial PSATs.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Hoo, Stephanie

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Leonard, John

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Copyright retained by author(s)

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/163432

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/163432