Technology is evolving to enable a better understanding of the lives of free-roaming fish in nature. While the advancements in recent decades have been impressive, there is often concomitant frustration that the technology does not meet our expectations. Trade-offs between size and longevity of electronic devices means that we often must choose specific life stages of fish that might not be of most interest to science, conservation or management. The detection range and the data transfer rate of biotelemetry devices can be limiting, particularly in marine environments where radio transmission must be replaced with acoustic transmission due to signal attenuation. Perhaps the greatest increase in the use of electronic tagging technologies comes from studies of movement ecology. These technologies inform us of where animals are – at least at a macro level – but they typically cannot tell us what animals are doing in those locations. Measuring physiological parameters can complement movement data to improve bioenergetics modelling and paint a more detailed picture of how fish exploit particular environments for critical processes like feeding and reproduction. This talk will discuss how electronic technologies are being used by fish biologists, and where the future may take us.