Hipster humans aren’t the only creatures who lurk in cafes. White sharks, black-footed albatrosses and albacore tuna have their own watery equivalent in a hot spot between Baja California and Hawaii.


That’s one finding of the Tagging of Pacific Predators project (www.topp.org), as published in the June 22 issue of the journal Nature. The project’s unprecedented scope – involving 4,306 electronic tags on 23 marine species, tracked by 70 scientists from five countries over the course of a decade – paints a remarkably detailed picture of predator movement in the Pacific Ocean.


Among the surprises: Salmon sharks that feed in Prince William Sound also vacation in the sub-tropics. Sooty shearwaters tagged in New Zealand fly to the Northern Hemisphere’s sub-polar regions in what constitutes the world’s longest documented migration.


“Every animal that we looked at did things that we didn’t expect it to do,” says Dr. Randy Kochevar, a TOPP investigator.


Several of the project’s lead scientists work on the Monterey Peninsula, including Dr. Steven Bograd of NOAA Fisheries’ Environmental Research Division in Pacific Grove and Dr. Barbara Block of Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station.


TOPP found that the California Current, which runs along the U.S. West Coast, supports a remarkably diverse buffet of marine life. Many predators also cruise along an ocean highway called the North Pacific Transition Zone between Alaska and Hawaii, where cold sub-arctic and warm sub-tropical waters merge.


“It might be analogous to what the first fur trappers coming West might have seen – this very rich, intact ecosystem,” says Kochevar, who works in Block’s lab.


The study, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Census of Marine Life, deployed a bevy of tracking technologies that logged not only the animals’ real-time locations, but also ocean temperatures, depth and salinity. To make sense of terabytes of data, TOPP scientists built a massive data management system that can help officials carry out an emerging policy approach known as ecosystem-based management, which focuses on protecting the habitats most critical to species survival.


Now that the TOPP project is wrapping up, Kochevar says, the focus will shift to the global sequel: www.gtopp.org, where the international “bio-logging” community can input data from tagging initiatives across the world.


“One day, people might be able to follow animals on their iPhone or iPad,” he says. “The work will absolutely continue.”