Acoustic Telemetry Array

Summer 2026 to Present

Timeframe: July 2026 – July 2031

Destin-Fort Walton Beach Natural Resources is deploying a 17.5-mile line of 35 Innovasea NexTrak acoustic receivers across the Okaloosa County continental shelf as part of a multi-million dollar initiative to acoustically capture tagged fish migrating across the continental shelf south of Destin-Fort Walton Beach. This will be the largest acoustic array curtain ever deployed and will further research opportunities in the destination. This project also directly supports a $5 million, Gulf-wide GSMFC-administered research initiative. The five-year, multi-state study brings together researchers across eight universities to close major data gaps on cobia and tripletail, two economically important but historically understudied recreational species covering population exchange rates, genetics, and responses to environmental change.
The receiver array will detect acoustically tagged marine species including cobia and tripletail as they move through Destin-Fort Walton Beach waters, contributing fine-scale movement data to the coast-wide dataset. The array integrates with the broader iTAG/FACT/ACT acoustic telemetry network, allowing detections to be shared across cooperating research groups from Texas to the Atlantic seaboard.

Partners: Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission (GSMFC), Louisiana State University (LSU), United States Geological Survey (USGS), University of South Alabama (USA), United States Geological Survey (USGS), University of South Florida (USF), Inovasea, iTAG/FACT/ACT, Destin-Fort Walton Beach Natural Resources Team