Announcing the BioBase Fish Mapping Layer: EcoFish!

 

Announcing EcoFish ^TM! A Game-Changing BioBase fish mapping layer powered by Echoview Software, the industry leader in fisheries hydroacoustic processing technology.

Now, anyone with a Lowrance® or Simrad® depth finder can generate detailed counts, depths, relative size, and location of fish. Not only that, but also at the same time with no additional work, acquire critical habitat details including surface water temperature, depth contours, bottom hardness, aquatic vegetation abundance, and detailed side-scan imagery of habitat. If you want the webinar version to learn more, check it out on our YouTube Channel, otherwise read on…

You can’t manage what you don’t measure and fish are notoriously hard to measure (or more accurately put, capture and count); especially non-lethally. In the Fisheries Manager toolbox, there are a range of traditional sampling gears (e.g., seines, trap or fyke nets, gill nets, electrofishing), but the majority of them have two major problems in common: 1) only a small proportion of the population are vulnerable to each survey gear. Often multiple gears are needed for multiple species and may only be effective at certain times of the year (e.g., during spawning). Number 2, most sampling gears cannot sample fish that stay in water much deeper than 6ft (2m). A fish population in a waterbody may be completely healthy, yet fish might not show up in the nets for a range of reasons.

There is a reason why “fish finders” are a $6 Billion industry….because they are very effective at finding fish! BioBase simply takes that abstract image of a fish arch you see on your sonar screen and turns it into data that you can analyze and use to inform your fisheries management.

Add EcoFish Fish Mapping Layer to any BioBase EcoSound^TM subscription

EcoFish is an add on to any EcoSound mapping subscription. If a user has the EcoFish add on, with any current or past* .sl2/3 file uploads that has the Primary “2D” or traditional sonar recorded, they get all features of EcoSound habitat/bathymetric mapping subscriptions described on biobasemaps.com/plans AND fish outputs.

BioBase processes the traditional broadband “2D” primary down looking single-beam sonar from any uploaded .sl2 or .sl3 file and creates fish outputs if the EcoFish feature is enabled, the file has the necessary components (e.g., GPS, sonar data), is not corrupted and has data deeper than 1m.

EcoFish Features

Individual Fish Counts and School Detection

Using sophisticated detection algorithms that separate fish from aquatic vegetation, structure, and other water column noise, individual fish “objects” deeper than 1m from the transducer face are identified in the sonar log and their depth and location is saved to the BioBase database and put on the BioBase map. If multiple fish cluster together so close that individuals cannot be identified in the file, the system calls the target a “school” and the location and depth of the mid point of that school is identified (Figure 1).

Relative Fish Size

We use the terms “large” and “small” “short” and “long” figuratively. EcoFish cannot (yet) tell you precisely how large or long a fish is. However, we can make some confident statements about relative size. Large fish generally return more energy than small fish. More energy means the color of the fish arch generated by big fish is a more intense yellow or “hot” color in the raw sonar image than a small fish which may have a more purple or “cool” color (Figures 3,4,5). Because BioBase processes uncalibrated single-beam sonar data, we do not know how big a fish target is in terms of length or weight by the acoustic return. But Fisheries’ Researchers and Managers know the systems they are studying/managing and generally have a rough idea of fish species and size ranges based on other fisheries datasets or lines of evidence (e.g., interviews from anglers, knowledge of fishes behavior and habitat and where they appear on the map, or mysterious fish of the deep showing up floating on the surface dead). BioBase generates a dimensionless acoustic size or perhaps more appropriately termed “immensity” value. Users can use these immensity values and their expert knowledge of their system to categorize the relative size of fish targets. We publish Small, Medium, and Large size breaks based on early feedback from a focus group of fisheries experts and test logs from a range of systems. Still, these categorizations should be viewed as experimental and we anticipate further refining the category breaks based on new data that comes into the system.

Dialing in!

Detection algorithms were carefully dialed to minimize false positive (falsely identifying something else in the image as a fish) and false negative detections (failing to identify a sufficiently large fish in the image). This includes where possible, blanking out vegetation, aquatic insects, and other bottom debris from being included in the outputs. BioBase will not process fish echoes from the top meter of water below the transducer. The water surface and area immediately below the transducer are areas of high energy where fish signals cannot be interpreted.

Abundance “heat” maps

When sonar logs are processed for fish, BioBase will create an abundance “heat” map in a Viridis color palette much like it creates other interpolated maps. A purple color is no fish detected and the brightest color yellow is 10 or more fish or a school detected within a 5-m x 5-m area. These maps can be exported from the Tools – Export Data Export Imagery area in BioBase.

Maps of Individual fish and schools along track

For users who want to see detail about where exactly individual fish were detected and what habitats they were hanging around, they can select the “Fish Targets” layer in BioBase (Figure 6).

Summary Reports of Fish Counts, Size, and Depth (EcoSound Habitat+ Only)

EcoSound Summary Reports have always been very popular, especially for aquatic vegetation summaries. Now we added a fish section complete with a histogram of fish counts by depth! In this great example, we see a distinct distribution of fish occupying deep depths (Figure 7). This lake in Indiana supports an endangered population of cisco that live exclusively in deep offshore waters. Until EcoFish, the only way the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (IN DNR) sampled them was through reports and collections of dead floaters. In this file, EcoFish detected 92 small- to medium-sized individuals. According to IN DNR Fisheries Biologist Matthew Linn, they’ve rarely seen individuals longer than 12 inches.

Export raw data sets of fish counts to do your own analysis

We are former researchers ourselves and understand how important good  raw data are. Therefore, we provide all users with the ability to export the processed individual fish and schools to do their own detailed statistical and GIS analysis (Figures 8 and 9). In the above example, we exported the point data and selected all rows (fish or schools) that were in 25 ft of water or deeper (depths reported by IN DNR to be the zone of occupation for cisco).

Detailed analysis of fish and underlying habitat with the polygon tool

Do you want to know how fish are responding to a habitat improvement project in a particular area of the lake? Or how many fish seem to congregate along a certain contour or in a specific area of a lake? Use the polygon tool to generate that information (Figure 10).

Google Earth Exports (.kml and .kmz)

Setting Custom Exclusion Zones

All transducers emit a burst of acoustic energy near the face of the transducer (e.g., commonly called “near-field,” “burst,” or “ring-down”). Further, surface of waters are often naturally sites of high turbulence and biological activity (e.g., floating plankton, insects and fry) that is highly acoustically reflective. As such, BioBase implements a minimum exclusion zone of 1m whereby the algorithm will only evaluate deeper depths. Users can expand these exclusion zones to focus their analysis on fish only at a certain depth. For instance, if Fisheries managers would like to focus only on the status of suspended or near bottom fish, they can enter a minimum depth in their user preferences and the resulting outputs will exclude all shallower depths.

Noteworthy Tips, Tricks, Caveats:

1. You can inflate fish numbers if you backtrack over the same area while recording. The abundance map controls for this with interpolation, but the same fish can get counted multiple times and inflate numbers in the summary report and raw data. User beware.
2. Because this is single beam data, BioBase can not tell the difference between a large fish on the edge of the cone or a small fish in the middle of the cone. However, a small fish (or insect) will never look acoustically large in the middle of the cone. Maintain the highest ping rates (default is max at 20 data points or pings per second) in order to get the best detail possible and maximize your chances you’ll get that big fish in the middle of the cone!
3. A sonar file is a collection of bytes of acoustic energy. Our algorithms are very accurate and robust but they are not perfect. A cloud of insects dense aquatic vegetation, and structures on the bottom can all “fool” the algorithm at times. The user should always review their BioBase outputs for accuracy and make edits as necessary.
4. The closer attention to detail you pay to your installation and data collection, the better, more reliable your data will be. In particular pay close attention to your transducer installation, making sure all sonar channels, especially the traditional primary “Sonar” or “2D”, are turned on (not “Stopped”), and are reading a clear signal while mapping (watch for plumes of surface noise indicating an improper transducer installation). Minimize accessories and equipment dragging in the water that can cause turbulence (air bubbles in the water). Finally, make sure your GPS is receiving satellite positions.

Proper transducer installation is Critical

For many reasons already detailed elsewhere, taking just a few moments to ensure your transducer is the right height and angle means the difference between high quality, and frankly, crap data. Here’s a specific example of how something as simple as a slanted transducer can impact the accuracy of fish counts and school detection

A Game Changer!

Counting fish with hydroacoustic technology (fancy science word for sonar) is not new. In fact, it’s used by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as one of several tools to set commercial fishing harvest quotas. So hydroacoustics is an essential technology for the sustainability of the world’s fisheries. Methods have been refined by decades of research and development by research institutions and private industry like our partners at Echoview Software. But due to the cost of equipment and complexity of analysis, hydroacoustic technology has remained out of reach for the majority of fisheries practitioners. No longer! EcoFish is BioBase’s clearest demonstration yet of how it has democratized the creation of aquatic maps and empowered biologists of all levels of expertise to generate their own high quality datasets. With EcoFish, Fisheries’ biologists now have a toolbox on steroids! More people generating more and better environmental data equates to better environmental decision making. Win for Conservation!

Tell Me More

Contact us to get more details about EcoFish and whether it could be a solution for your system(s) of interest and get started with a free trial today!*

*Existing BioBase Customers should fill out this form to get a limited free trial. New customers may be eligible for a full featured 30-day free trial of BioBase EcoSound and EcoFish.

NOTE: For additional updated details on features, known issues/bugs, and release notes visit this blog