Fisheries and fisheries habitat investigations using undersea technology

Abstract

The West Coast and Polar Regions Undersea Research Center (WC & PRURC), founded in 1990, has encouraged and funded innovative approaches to fisheries habitat research along the coasts of California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska, where fisheries management is a major economic, environmental, and political issue. This has led to development of new interdisciplinary techniques for research on benthic fish habitat. Various government agencies are now incorporating the techniques into their overall science programs. Initially, the WC and PR Center sponsored workshops in the early 1990s on the use of occupied submersibles and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) at fisheries meetings. Subsequent workshops involved use of geophysical techniques (e.g., side-scan sonar and multibeam sonars) as a tool for mapping fish habitats in conjunction with undersea vehicle ground-truthing and stock assessments, particularly in untrawlable locations. The center has funded research teams composed of fishery experts and professional geologists on projects that, in part, grew out of these workshops.. These projects have focused on the relationships between fish populations and the geology and ecology of benthic habitats using a combination of high-resolution sonar mapping of the seafloor and visual observations with submersibles, ROVs and SCUBA.