The ocean is vast, and fish swim.
These are challenges for scientists who need to find out when, where, and how many, fish are found in Alaska’s marine waters. They also want to know which species and what ages are found there—all information essential to managing Alaska’s valuable commercial fisheries sustainably.
Recent advances in autonomous vehicle and fish finders or echosounder (sonar) technology may help overcome those challenges. A new NOAA Fisheries study demonstrates that unmanned surface vehicles can expand the range and duration of ship-based acoustic fish surveys.
“This opens a window in time and space that we didn’t have using ships alone,” said Alex De Robertis, the NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center scientist who led the study. “Ship-based surveys are limited because they are short, and mostly done in summer—we don’t know what happens the rest of the time. Our results show that oceangoing robots such as saildrones now make autonomous long-term acoustic measurements possible.”
Continue reading at NOAA.
Image via NOAA.