Fish population dynamics revealed by instantaneous continental-shelf scale acoustic imaging

Abstract

Video images of fish population densities over vast areas of the New Jersey continental shelf have been produced from acoustic data collected on a long range bistatic sonar system during the Acoustic Clutter 2003 experiment. Areal fish population densities were obtained after correcting the acoustic data for two-way transmission loss modeled using the range-dependent parabolic equation, spatially varying beampattern of the array, source level and mean target strength per fish. The wide-area fish density images reveal the temporal evolution of fish school distributions, their migration, as well as shoal formation and fragmentation at 50 s interval. Time series of the fish population within various density thresholds were made over the period of a day in an area containing millions of fish that at some instances formed a massive shoal extending over 12 km. The analysis shows that fish population in the area can be decomposed into a stable ambient population from lower-fish-density regions and a time-varying population composed from higher-density regions. Estimates of the differential speed between population centers of various shoals show that the average speed is on the order of a slow-moving surface vessel or submarine.