Howard Hall commented here on Wetpixel about the proliferation of tags that are festooning some marine animals and the potential negative effects that these may have on the animals that the studiers seek to understand. A paper published recently in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B entitled Grey Seals use anthropogenic signals from acoustic tags to locate fish shows how grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) have learnt to use the signals emitted by fish tags as an aid to hunting more efficiently.

The research team, based at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, have described the seals’ response to fish tags as the “dinner bell effect”. This has fairly profound implications for those using the tags to study fish population, especially if those populations are under threat.