Global distribution of aquatic animal telemetry effort reveals geographic biases and opportunities for more inclusive tracking studies

Aquatic animal telemetry studies (both acoustic and satellite) have been conducted across diverse global ecosystems since their emergence and embrace as a reliable tool in the 1980s. Despite an impressively broad distribution of study sites, important biogeographic regions remain poorly studied. To examine the factors correlated with the global distribution of telemetry studies up to December 31, 2022, we modeled the combined number of acoustic and satellite telemetry studies published in each country using explanatory covariates: mean political stability score, mean total conservation funding, mean population size, total number of citable scientific documents produced, combined length of the freshwater and marine coastlines, number of identified Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA), and whether English was the nation's first language. The most important variables correlated with the distribution of telemetry studies were mean political stability score, conservation funding, number of identified KBAs, and English as a first language. Of 2728 aquatic animal telemetry studies, 75% were conducted in nations with political stability scores from the top three most stable of 11 total categories, increasing to 87% when normalized by number of nations per category group. Only 195 studies (7.2%) fell within the boundaries of areas identified as global priorities for fisheries management and conservation focus, while 543 (19.9%) fell within the boundaries of identified KBAs. Despite the associated difficulties of working in politically unstable regions and the known imbalance in global scientific funding, without focused effort a more complete understanding of global aquatic ecosystems and their connectivity will not be possible. In turn, our ability to effectively counter persistent biodiversity loss will be hindered. Increased efforts to build local capacity in such regions through training, collaboration, accessibility to funding, and fostering awareness of loan schemes for acoustic tracking infrastructure are priorities to ensure electronic tracking tools are accessible to all regions of the globe.