Ocean tracking technologies: observing species at risk
The Ocean Tracking Network is a major global project to establish tracking of endangered fish and marine mammal species through acoustic telemetry. The project has only begun to generate the policy related outcomes that may be utilized as benchmarks for evaluating the success of the project. We propose that projects like this one make technical advances before scientific ones, and that scientific advances may be quite long term. Further, the development of policy outcomes is shaped by the larger political economies in which the technologies are located; scientists are quite used to "flying under the radar" waiting for more propitious circumstances. There are serious questions regarding which actors are capable of making matters of fact issues of public debate.