SCAS Workshop 2026

NOTE: this workshop has been update to align with OTN’s 2025 Detection Extract Format. For older detection extracts, please see the this lesson: Archived OTN Workshop.

Overview Hosted by the Ocean Tracking Network, this workshop will introduce the R programming language at the 2026 SCAS-IAGLR Conference.

We will be located in Room 5. Check out the IAGLR & SCAS-SCSA Joint Conference website for a detailed schedule.

The Ocean Tracking Network (OTN) is a global aquatic research, data management and partnership platform headquartered at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

This workshop will introduce the R programming language, popular in the field of biologging, using the lens of filtering, analyzing, and visualizing acoustic telemetry data.

We will explore some of the popular software packages suitable for exploring and plotting acoustic telemetry data, including dplyr and ggplot2, for the purpose of generating summaries for animal movement and instrument reports.

If we have time, we will also offer a brief overview of useful packages in the acoustic telemetry space, especially the glatos R package for performing detection filtering and various calculations and plotting.

If you have questions about this curriculum, please reach out to otndc@dal.ca

Schedule

	Setup	Download files required for the lesson
00:00	1. Background	What is the Ocean Tracking Network? How does your local telemetry network interact with OTN? What methods of data analysis will be covered?
00:05	2. Intro to R	What are common operators in R? What are common data types in R? What are some base R functions? How do I deal with missing data?
00:55	3. Starting with Data Frames	How do I import tabular data? How do I explore my data set? What are some basic data manipulation functions?
01:30	4. Intro to Plotting	How do I plot my data? How can I plot summaries of my data?
01:55	5. Telemetry Reports - Imports	What datasets do I need from the Network? How do I import all the datasets?
02:05	6. Telemetry Reports for Array Operators	How do I summarize and plot my deployments? How do I summarize and plot my detections?
02:35	7. Telemetry Reports for Tag Owners	How do I summarize and plot my detections? How do I summarize and plot my tag metadata?
03:05	8. Introduction to glatos Data Processing Package	How do I load my data into glatos? How do I filter out false detections? How can I consolidate my detections into detection events? How do I summarize my data?
03:35	9. More Features of glatos	What other features does glatos offer?
03:50	10. Basic Visualization and Plotting with glatos	How can I use glatos to plot my data? What kinds of plots can I make with my data?
04:20	11. Other OTN Telemetry Curriculums	How can I expand my learning?
04:20	Finish

The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.