HakeIGP: Hake biological data integration

Conventional acoustic surveys utilize biological data collected with temporally and spatially co-located midwater and/or bottom trawls to validate their observations, i.e., acoustic-trawl (AT) data. To take advantage of the recent technological advances in collecting acoustic data via platforms different from the traditional ship-based systems, such as uncrewed marine systems (UxSs), we need to seek alternative strategies that can provide crucial biological information. Through the Hake biological data integration project (HakeIGP), the echospace team is assisting the Fisheries Engineering and Acoustics Technology (FEAT) team at the NOAA Fisheries Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC) as they explore the applicability of using biological information for Pacific hake from bottom trawl (BT) surveys and the at-sea hake observer programs (OP) in both U.S. and Canadian waters to augment coast-wide hake acoustic surveys using UxSs. This work will involve the integration of the AT, BT, and OP biological data from 2003 to 2019 into a NWFSC-hosted database with a unified format. This will enable the quantitative evaluation of similarities and differences among the three data sources and assessment of the associated variability. The resulting software and workflow will facilitate the integration of all three data sources into a unified format and enable research to answer two important questions: (1) Can we use biological data from alternative sources to provide effective and satisfactory biomass estimates or biomass indices for UxSs-based acoustic surveys? (2) Can we extract new biological information on hake by analyzing the integrated fishery–dependent (OP) and fishery–independent (AT and BT) data?

Funding agency: NOAA Fisheries, NOAA NWFSC