Assessment of Population Abundance by Hydroacoustics

Abstract

AbstractThe extensive application of hydroacoustics to commercial fisheries provides a background for evaluation of its potential application to micronekton studies. Hydroacoustics has several advantages over other fishery resource assessment techniques, including high sampling power and capability for absolute population estimates, but also suffers from poor species discrimination, high complexity, and potential bias from target strength uncertainties. Application to micronekton encounters similar or even greater species identification problems and greater uncertainty associated with target characteristics, but even presently hydroacoustics offers a valuable tool for studies of patchiness and other behavioral characteristics.