Spatially explicit models of fish production: The integration of acoustics and bioenergetics.

Abstract

Acoustic sensors provide detailed information on biological structure in the sea at relatively fine spatial and temporal scales of resolution. Using a newly developed acoustic visualization and information retrieval (AVAIR) system, this acoustical information is more fully exploited by coupling acoustic data on prey sizes and density and measures of the physical habitat with species-specific bioenergetic models of fish growth rate. The result is a two-dimensional spatial model of fish growth rate potential and system production that has statistical properties and dynamics that differ from those of the underlying physical and biological structure of the system. Given the nonlinearity of most biological processes (growth, production, foraging, behavior), it is argued that such spatially (and temporally) explicit modeling is necessary to link biological processes to physical and biological structure and to predict how changes in patterning and scaling of the environment might affect such higher-order features of the environment.