Seeing further: broadband acoustics for improved measurements of demersal fishes

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2015

End date

12/31/2018

Budget

557,190 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

Fishery and scientific echosounders have difficulty in seeing fish that are close to the seabed because of the very strong echo from the seabed. This problem hinders the use of acoustic tools and techniques for detecting, measuring, and observing demersal fishes. New technology echosounders are now available that use a much wider range of frequencies (broadband) and allow for more sophisticated acoustic signals and more complex signal processing techniques. These give a much higher frequency and range resolution and will permit the development of techniques to see closer to the seabed. The increased frequency resolution will also facilitate the enhancement of existing species identification techniques, leading to better acoustic determination of fish species. This project has: 1) Carried out experiments to find better ways to acoustically detect fish close to the seabed using broadband acoustic signals. 2) Collected broadband data from fish schools and other marine organisms 3) Developed improved methods of detecting fish close to the seabed 4) Made comparisons of the performance of broadband and narrowband echosounders close to the seabed