Visualizing the tracking and diving behavior of marine mammals: a case study

A new method of tracking free ranging marine mammals has been developed which employs a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver to accurately fix an animal´s position when it surfaces and a tri axial magnetometer and velocity time depth recorder to track the animals underwater movements between surfacings in 3 dimensions. Concurrent with the development of the electronics of this movement and position tracking (MAP) tracking system has been the development of ways to analyze data from the MAP system. Spray rendering has been used to visualize the data and to combine it with environmental data allowing biologists view the animals activity in an environmental context. Considerable effort has been has been made to incorporate estimations of uncertainty and ways of minimizing it into our visualizations of the data