Sea turtles complete migrations across vast distances, covering entire ocean basins. To track these migrations, satellite tracking tags are attached to their shells. The impact of these tags must be considered to ensure that turtles’ natural behavior is not artificially and adversely impacted through tag-related drag, and that the data collected by a small sample of sea turtles accurately represents the larger population. Additionally, it can be difficult to study animal energetics in the field over large migration distances. In this work, we modify a computational behavior model to study how satellite tracking tags affect turtle migration behavior. Our agent based model contains synthetic magnetic field environments that are used for navigation cues, an ocean current, resource distributions that represent locations of food, and an agent that attempts to migrate to several different goals. The agent loses energy as it progresses, and searches for the resource distributions to replenish itself. Our novel simulation framework demonstrates the relationship between an agent’s available energy capacity, its energy consumption based on mechanical power expended, and its ability to navigate to all migratory goal points. This study can be utilized to (1) probe the impacts of an animal’s energy capacity and foraging behavior on its resulting navigation and ecology, (2) guide future satellite tag designs, and (3) develop usage recommendations for a suitable tracking tag based on the type of experiment being conducted. Our model can be expanded beyond sea turtles to study other marine species (e.g., sharks, whales). Additionally, this model could be expanded to other domains within the marine environment. For example, it could be modified to examine design trade-offs in remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), which share many of the same operational constraints as sea turtles and other migratory species.

海龟完成远距离迁徙，覆盖整个海洋盆地。为了跟踪这些迁移，卫星跟踪标签被贴在它们的外壳上。必须考虑这些标签的影响，以确保海龟的自然行为不会因标签相关的阻力而受到人为的不利影响，并且小海龟样本收集的数据准确地代表了更大的种群。此外，在野外研究大迁移距离的动物能量学可能很困难。在这项工作中，我们修改了一个计算行为模型来研究卫星跟踪标签如何影响海龟迁徙行为。我们基于代理的模型包含合成磁场环境，用于导航提示、洋流、代表食物位置的资源分布、以及尝试迁移到多个不同目标的代理。代理在进行过程中会失去能量，并会寻找资源分配来补充自身。我们新颖的模拟框架展示了代理的可用能量容量、基于机械功率消耗的能量消耗以及导航到所有迁移目标点的能力之间的关系。这项研究可用于 (1) 探测动物的能量容量和觅食行为对其产生的导航和生态的影响，(2) 指导未来的卫星标签设计，以及 (3) 为合适的跟踪标签制定使用建议进行的实验类型。我们的模型可以扩展到海龟以外的其他海洋物种（例如鲨鱼、鲸鱼）。此外，该模型可以扩展到海洋环境中的其他领域。例如，可以对其进行修改以检查遥控车辆 (ROV) 的设计权衡，这些车辆与海龟和其他迁徙物种具有许多相同的操作限制。