A significant gap in many ecologists' toolkits is being able to connect animal tracking data to ocean processes easily and to visualize this combined data.
The goal of this project is to optimize a tool for making environmental data (ocean velocity, eddy kinetic energy, SST, etc.) in an easy-to-use format for ecological research (i.e., make available environmental data easier to load into R or Python, format data and overlay it with GPS locations of tracked animals).
Several papers have demonstrated links between large marine animals and mesoscale eddies as they present foraging opportunities in the open ocean. Examples include:
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/35/17187.full.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-25565-8
Dataframes resulting from this project's code will help ecologist's form a base for carrying out statistical analyses between habitat use/residency data and variables associated with mesoscale oceanic processes, shedding light on animal behaviours in these areas. In addition, data collected by animal tags in these remote areas (often of interest to oceanographers/climate scientists) may provide a lost-cost ocean observation alternative to traditional methods.