Rachel Newsome, PhD Candidate at Murdoch University and Forrest Scholar

Everyone deserves the opportunity to have magical experiences in nature. Nature is stimulating. Our natural world provides not just benefits at the ecosystem level, but also nourishes the human mind. Observing and interacting with the many spectacular animals that live amongst us can foster a newfound appreciation for the environment and the world we live in. I always say that seeing wild Orang-Utans in the tropical rainforests of Borneo at the age of five is what solidified my passion for the environment, which later transformed into undertaking studies in Marine Biology. In this way, these experiences not only benefit us but also are some of the major driving forces behind conservation.

It is not just magnificent creatures and landscapes that drive my passion for research and conservation, but the unique and creative ways in which humans strive to learn more about the world that we live in.

One such approach that I find particularly inspiring is using technology, similar to those found in modern mobile phones and FitBit or Apple Watch activity-tracking devices to study animals. Animal-attached tags allow us to track not just an animal’s movement, but also its physiology, behaviour and environment all at the same time. Some tags even allow us a unique ‘day in the life’ perspective through animal-borne video cameras that are included in these tag devices.

In the marine environment, tag technologies allow us to collect data on GPS locations of an individual, the depths that an individual reaches, their activity (through frequency of wing, tail, or flipper beats), the surrounding environmental temperature and more! This means that the scope for what research questions we can ask is constantly expanding, allowing us to study facets of animal movement and behaviour that we previously could not even begin to fathom.

Considering how highly I have spoken about tags, is it not surprising that in my PhD I use these animal-attached tagging technologies to study the functional ecology of reef manta rays, comparing their activity regimes, movement and behaviour between Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia and the Seychelles Amirantes Island Group. Manta rays are exceptional creatures; ‘gentle giants’ that live in the same environment as our large sharks and whales. Although sharing a similar environment, and often a similar food source, the morphology of the manta rays (and other mobulid rays, the devil rays) is completely unlike any other pelagic creature. This unique morphology (alongside a myriad of other challenges which I will not delve into right now) has made it particularly difficult to collect motion-sensitive data for these species as tags need to be stationary on the animal for this data to be accurate.

The first objective of my PhD is to overcome these limitations by working with an inter-disciplinary team including engineers and biologists from Customised Animal Tracking Solutions to design a new attachment for the reef manta ray. Following this, we will have collected data on the variable body movement, angle and orientation of this species for the first time. As part of this process, we need to trial this new design.

Trialling a new design and method, rather than using tried-and-tested methods is extremely challenging. My first PhD fieldtrip, which recently concluded, involved days of swimming relentlessly against currents and swell, hours of altering minor features of the attachment with lesson after lesson being learned. These experiences, however, and working with the incredible group of people I am fortunate enough to work alongside is what makes this sort of work so inspiring and so exciting. With my next fieldtrip coming up, and every cell in my body oozing with optimism, I am excited to trial the attachment design further and continue to collect novel data on the reef manta ray. I am only at the very start of my PhD journey and I look forward to seeing where it takes me (and the manta rays) over the next few years.

Rachel Newsome is a recipient of a 2023 Holsworth Wildlife Endowment Grant.