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Marine telemetry expands the knowledge of the biology of marine species at risk: their life cycles, activities, interactions, habitats, and threats. Four seal species in Canada and Australia are faced with distinctive and divergent management problems. This article examines their conservation status, legal protection, and the role that telemetry has played, or could play, in providing previously unavailable information to help meet conservation goals. The value of telemetry data to minimize fisheries mortality of one species has been demonstrated in Australia. Despite there being significant telemetry data for the other species, policy and management have not yet responded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic telemetry is making major contributions to understanding the biology and the recovery of threatened and endangered aquatic species. A variety of electronic tag systems are available, with each type having it own strengths and weaknesses. Global networking and data sharing are becoming common, and are necessary to maximize benefits from investments in telemetry infrastructure. Future technology development will advance new sensors to document specific causes contributing to species declines (e.g., predation tags and camera tags). There is a need to expand the use of telemetry, especially in developing nations, to help guide sustainable use of the oceans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the importance of a holistic ecohydraulics approach in advancing fish passage design and highlights the bias towards one biological approach, namely, telemetry, over others in recent publications. Topics include telemetry studies often provide valuable information, but are frequently constrained by the sites pecific context on which case studies are based and even the most high technology telemetry techniques are unable to obtain detailed information on fish behaviour.