In fisheries acoustics, the target strength (TS; dB re m2) is used to compute biological metrics such as fish biomass and density. The TS is challenging to characterize because of its stochastic relationship with fish physiology, orientation, depth, species assemblage, and size distributions. These challenges were addressed by using acoustic and physical samples of fish from trawls in the Penobscot River Estuary, Maine. The pelagic species assemblage was dominated by clupeids and osmerids. The TS was measured from individual fish using single target detection and echo tracking algorithms. An expectation–maximization algorithm was applied to identify the components of the TS and total length (TL; cm) distributions for the mixed species assemblages. Regressions were used to estimate the parameters of TS = α log10(TL) + β. The parameters, α = 31.2 [standard error (SE) 0.87] and β = –79.6 (SE 0.93), were similar to published studies from these species, but our slope and intercept were higher than those in studies from freshwater and lower than those from marine systems. These results suggest that acoustic surveys in estuaries with mixed species assemblages should carefully consider alternatives to “standard” TS-fish length equations. These results will provide necessary parameters to allow for interpretation of acoustic survey data from systems with a similar composition of pelagic species.
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October 2021
October 08 2021
Estimating target strength of estuarine pelagic fish assemblages using fisheries survey data
Justin R. Stevens;
Justin R. Stevens
a)
1
Integrated Statistics Inc. under contract to NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service, Northeast Fisheries Science Center
, 17 Godfrey Drive, Suite 1, Orono, Maine 04473, USA
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J. Michael Jech;
J. Michael Jech
2
NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service, Northeast Fisheries Science Center, Woods Hole
, Massachusetts 02543, USA
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Gayle B. Zydlewski;
Gayle B. Zydlewski
3
University of Maine School of Marine Sciences
, Orono, Maine 04469-5741, USA
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Damian C. Brady
Damian C. Brady
3
University of Maine School of Marine Sciences
, Orono, Maine 04469-5741, USA
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a)
Current address: Maine Sea Grant, 5741 Libby Hall, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5741, USA. Electronic mail: [email protected], ORCID: 0000-0002-1142-498X.
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 150, 2553–2565 (2021)
Article history
Received:
February 01 2021
Accepted:
September 08 2021
Citation
Justin R. Stevens, J. Michael Jech, Gayle B. Zydlewski, Damian C. Brady; Estimating target strength of estuarine pelagic fish assemblages using fisheries survey data. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 October 2021; 150 (4): 2553–2565. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0006449
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