First Solar Powered Geomagnetic Archival Fish Tag

Desert Star jumped at the opportunity to develop innovative new tag designs for NOAA. Their first tag, SeaTag-GEO, is a small geo-positioning only archival tag. It has many unique features that make it completely different from other archival tags being manufactured. For starters, the tag uses a solar cell to charge an aerogel capacitor; it uses no batteries in this configuration. The tag also has no external connector; it uses a docking station to send and retrieve data. When placed in the docking station, the tag receives information through the solar cell and sends data through a built-in antenna (RF).

Finally, SeaTag-GEO uses a 3-axis magnetometer to acquire magnetic field strength data from the Earth. The total strength of the Earth's magnetic field is well characterized, and in most parts of the planet varies distinctively with latitude. Thus, SeaTag replaces length-of-day based latitude estimation with simple and reliable magnetometer readings; a method that works independently of cloud cover, water turbidity, and season (for example, equinoxes).