An at-sea assessment of Argos location accuracy for three species of large whales, and the effect of deep-diving behavior on location error

Table 3 Percentiles of ranked absolute Argos location errors calculated for floating whale tags

68%		Magnitude	Longitude		Latitude
LC	Argos	Floating tag	VMRF02	Floating tag	VMRF02	Floating tag
3	< 250	410	295	316	157	229
2	250–500	636	485	443	259	375
1	500–1500	1063	1021	651	494	575
0	> 1500	1083	3308	925	2271	679
A	NA	1026	1244	633	762	659
B	NA	1398	7214	935	4596	803

95%		Magnitude	Longitude		Latitude
3	NA	1219	742	957	326	728
2	NA	1699	1355	1330	511	980
1	NA	2260	3498	2029	1265	1708
0	NA	4208	15,361	3786	5517	2382
A	NA	3132	10,393	1592	5373	1927
B	NA	49,605	41,219	17,011	15,535	36,141

The 68th and 95th percentiles of theoretical error for each location class (LC) as reported by the Argos Service [29] compared to the error magnitude calculated in this study for tags floating at the surface after having released from sperm and blue/fin whales. Also presented are the ranked absolute errors in longitude and latitude for each location class as reported by VMRF02 and as calculated in this study. All values are in meters. Data were collected from sperm whales tracked in the Gulf of Mexico during summer 2011 and 2013, and from blue and fin whales tracked off southern California during late summer 2014 and 2015

ISSN: 2050-3385