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 2 Percentiles of ranked absolute Argos location errors calculated for three free-ranging whale species

68%		Magnitude		Longitude			Latitude
LC	Argos	Sperm	Blue/Fin	VMRF02	Sperm	Blue/Fin	VMRF02	Sperm	Blue/Fin
3	< 250	964	647	295	563	440	157	453	335
2	250–500	1968	932	485	1465	743	259	1046	481
1	500–1500	3902	1447	1021	3129	1141	494	2060	701
0	> 1500	7084	3107	3308	6215	2618	2271	3150	1371
A	NA	7210	2176	1244	5320	1511	762	3435	1020
B	NA	10,569	5589	7214	7774	4242	4596	5447	2481

95%		Magnitude		Longitude			Latitude
3	NA	2301	1422	742	2152	1196	326	1930	1036
2	NA	3722	2251	1355	2881	1997	511	2432	1394
1	NA	6833	3318	3498	5690	2879	1265	4262	1835
0	NA	17,304	10,087	15,361	16,590	9625	5517	6558	4210
A	NA	16,506	6640	10,393	12,530	6131	5373	9650	2906
B	NA	30,044	20,397	41,219	22,905	17,965	15,535	19,889	8633

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 attached to 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