Advanced Ecosystem Forecasting Tools: the Integration of Fisheries Acoustics into Fixed Platform Observing Systems for Real-time Measures of Fish Abundances

Primary Investigator:

Doran Mason - NOAA/GLERL

Co-Investigators:

Steve Ruberg - NOAA/GLERL

NOAA Research Area:

Advancing understanding of ecosystems to improve resource management

Performance Objective:

Increase number of regional coastal and marine ecosystems delineated with approved indicators of ecological health and socioeconomic benefits that are monitored and understood

Research Milestones:

Meet annual targets for the number of Coastal, Marine, and Great Lakes Ecological Characterizations that meet management needs.

Executive Summary of Rationale

We propose a pilot study to integrate and test real-time biological measures of fish and zooplankton, using fisheries acoustics, in existing fixed platform observation networks. The integration and test will be applied to the AOML Integrated Coral Observing Network (ICON) located on Molasses Reef, part of the Florida Keys National Sanctuary, and will leverage advanced observing system technology developed under the Real-time Coastal Observation Network (ReCON) program at GLERL. The fisheries acoustics system will include new advanced developments in hardware and software. The final product, a real-time fish/environmental observation system, will provide real-time data for ecosystem forecasting (e.g., provide data for the existing advanced expert forecasting system developed at AOML), as well as provide real-time data for monitoring and assessment of fishes, insight into temporal behavior and variation, and for event response by fisheries managers. This project is unique and innovative in that it will develop and demonstrate a first-time application of an integrated, interactive, and real-time fish/environmental observation system; significantly advancing regional, national and international fisheries research and assessment. Such a project, although tested on coral reefs, has national potential to coastal and Great Lakes fisheries assessments.

Proposed Work

Current/Ongoing

The system design team consisting of the bioacoustics supplier and GLERL engineering staff will be responsible for system integration and lab and field testing. The deployment and maintenance of the system on Molasses Reef (Figure 2) within the sanctuary will be the responsibility of GLERL and FIO-SEAKEYS personnel. Integration of fisheries acoustic data into the ICON expert system will be the responsibility of AOML and GLERL scientists.

BioSonics will provide standard and custom hardware, standard and custom software for echosounder and rotator operation, custom software for target analysis and reporting, and support for hardware and software installation, operation, and data handling throughout the project. Hardware components will consist of BioSonics DT-X Digital Scientific Echosounder System equipped with a BioSonics 70KhZ digital transducer, a custom housing for deployment, internal data storage and onboard processing, energy-saving system modifications, dual-axis rotator system for aiming and scanning of the transducers. The custom software proposed here will add advanced software for system operation, control and analysis appropriate to a fixed-deployed situation. This software will include: a) System operation monitoring to optimize power consumption, for real-time analysis for presence of targets of interest (e.g., reef fishes), and for regular reporting of system status. b) Automated area-scanning system to maximize coverage in the vicinity of the observation platform and to concentrate sampling in the areas where fish of interest are most abundant and/or active. c) Onboard data storage of operational and detection information for archiving and additional analysis. d) Automated can Continuous Data Processing for collection, storage, and analysis of data for presence, abundance, size, and distribution of targets of interest. e) Automated reporting of relevant information via fixed-system remote connection to shore-based receiving system.

In addition, fisheries acoustics data will be integrated with hourly observations of environmental parameters such as meteorology, waves, water temperature,_pCO₂, light, etc from existing sensors located on and associated with the observational platform. Acoustics ground-truth information in the near field will be provided by bore-sighting a web-based camera system on the acoustics rotator. The combined information will allow correlation of fisheries acoustics observations with local environmental episodic events within range of the camera.

Scientific Rationale

There is increasing demand and requirement for real-time oceanographic and meteorological data from coastal observing systems. Demand for real time data are in response to and in support of monitoring and assessment needs, improving weather and ecological forecasts, recreational needs, and for outreach and educational programs. However, much of the emphasis in the past has been in continuous measures of environmental and physical data (e.g., water temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, currents, etc), with direct measures of food web components being limited to chlorophyll-a (fluorescence) and sometimes relative zooplankton biomass (with the use of ADCPs), i.e., direct measures of biota is rare on observation networks. Yet such direct and continuous measures across all trophic levels are critical for enhancing fish recruitment models and predicting food web responses to anthropogenic perturbations (e.g., climate change, invasive species, nutrient loading). Thus, a unique and valuable opportunity exists to integrate other sensors in real-time observations for the direct measurement of zooplankton and fish biomass, size distribution, temporal variation, and spatial distribution.

Herein, we propose to develop, implement, and demonstrate an integrated fish/environmental observation system which monitors and measures the environmental and biological environment in real-time. Our efforts focus on integrating fisheries acoustics for the direct measure of fishes into exiting fixed platform observation networks. We will develop and implement this novel capability in the already successful ICON and SEAKEYS project in south Florida and transferring technology developed under the ReCON project. This project is unique and innovative in that it will develop and demonstrate a first-time application of an integrated, interactive, and real-time fish/environmental observation system; significantly advancing regional, national and international fisheries research and assessment.

Our proposed fish/environmental observation system will provide important information on fish behavior and aggregation relative to daily, seasonal, and environmental/physical cues (e.g., upwelling, water quality). Such behavioral information is important for understanding how hydrodynamic anomalies and seasons may regulate fish aggregation, abundance, and recruitment processes. In addition, our observation system will provide essential data often used by fisheries managers, i.e., fish size structure, abundance, and spatial distributions. Moreover, size and abundance information can be used to develop indicators of fish community health (e.g., size structure and abundance of fish community). For example, an increase in small fish size particles may discern recruitment events (large number of small fish settling on the reef), or a decrease in large fishes maybe indicative of overfishing. The immediate contribution of these data are towards supporting the current development of fish spawning aggregation forecasts by providing near real-time data feeds to forecasting projections and monitor and assess fish settlement and thereby providing data for the development of fish recruitment models. Once the integration of these technologies is complete, additional acoustic frequencies¹ may be added to monitor and assess coral spawning with direct feedback to forecasting models.

Thus, the integration of acoustics sensors to measure the marine biota with existing sensors which measure environmental variables would be invaluable providing a complete picture of the marine physical and biological environment. Such an endeavor will provide new capabilities with traditional instruments/sensors typically found on observing platforms, and directly support information and data needs for achieving NOAA’s Ecosystem Mission goal, needs of the public (e.g., fisherman, swimmers, etc), managers (water quality and fisheries) and existing and future ecosystem forecasting capabilities.

Governmental/Societal Relevance

Our proposed continued development of ICON and ReCON by adding real-time and near continuous measures of fishes will directly support NOAA’s Ecosystem Mission Goal. Outcome- “Healthy and productive coastal and marine ecosystems that benefit society” by providing information required for forecasting models, and Outcome- “A well-informed public that acts as steward of coastal and marine ecosystems” by providing real-time and integrated biological and physical data viewable over the internet.

¹ Multiple frequency response from fish and zooplankton are currently being used to successfully identify biological groupings, such as fish species and fish/zooplankton assemblages.