Sonar for Sturgeons

Fishy Fridays

Weekly spotlight on fisheries science journal articles

 

Jeff Kopaska
AFS Executive Director
jkopaska@fisheries.org

Today’s paper reminded me of some of the sturgeon sampling I assisted with in my former role with the Iowa DNR. We would go out electrofishing (and trammel netting) for Shovelnose Sturgeon during their spring spawning run, and we would tag the captured fish with PIT tags and monel tags.  I believe it was more interesting to see a big paddlefish swirl in front of me, than to see an alligator on a video screen.

Another reason I chose this paper is that there is a symposium at the upcoming AFS Annual Meeting on Advancing Sonar Techniques in Fisheries Research and Management, which includes three talks about side scan sonar, and one of those is a sturgeon talk. I really enjoyed this paper and how it utilized the sonar technology to bring a new tool to the fishery scientists toolbox. The authors did a great job of identifying the challenges and benefits of this approach, and added to the knowledge base regarding Atlantic Sturgeon populations. From the looks of the sonar graphs, the water is likely too deep for electrofishing, and the authors indicated the other sampling possibility was gill nets. The non-invasive technique certainly has advantages for the researchers and the fish, but there are also lots of things that are learned by handling the study species – I hope they got to experience that part of research too.

Using side-scan sonar to estimate the abundance of dual-spawning Atlantic Sturgeon in the Great Pee Dee River, South Carolina