The Hydrophone Data Repository (Hydra): An Openly Available Online Database for Acoustic Telemetry Data Management and Sharing

Hydra was developed to facilitate data sharing and research coordination for researchers from a variety of federal, state, county, and local agencies, tribes, and universities in aggregate are using several hundred hydrophones to conduct research studies on movement patterns of aquatic animals in the Pacific Northwest. Each program is characterized by numerous tagged animals that move and a relatively limited number of acoustic receivers that are located to address a significant question for individual programs. Importantly, these tagged animals move over larger domains than individual receiver arrays. These researchers have recognized the value of coordinating placement of hydrophones to improve their collective listening capability and ability to address emergent, larger-scale management questions. Researchers needed the ability to efficiently share detections of each other’s tag codes to enable the larger research collaboration.

 Hydra provides researchers automated data processing and quality control tools, map-based visualization tools, and easy data download tools. Hydra respects the diverse data sharing needs of individual researchers; while Hydra provides tools that allow custom data sharing between individuals, groups, and with the public, there are no data sharing or publication requirements. Hydra is openly available to all researchers from all agencies. Hydra’s geographical extent has grown from the Puget Sound north to British Columbia and south to Oregon.