Recreational Fish-Finders—An Inexpensive Alternative to Scientific Echo-Sounders for Unravelling the Links between Marine Top Predators and Their Prey

Studies investigating how mobile marine predators respond to their prey are limited due to the challenging nature of the environment. While marine top predators are increasingly easy to study thanks to developments in bio-logging technology, typically there is scant information on the distribution a...

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Vydáno v:PloS one Ročník 10; číslo 11; s. e0140936
Hlavní autoři: McInnes, Alistair M., Khoosal, Arjun, Murrell, Ben, Merkle, Dagmar, Lacerda, Miguel, Nyengera, Reason, Coetzee, Janet C., Edwards, Loyd C., Ryan, Peter G., Rademan, Johan, van der Westhuizen, Jan J, Pichegru, Lorien
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:angličtina
Vydáno: United States Public Library of Science 23.11.2015
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Témata:
Abundance
Acoustics
Africa
Agriculture
Analysis
Animal behavior
Animals
Aquatic Organisms - physiology
Backscattering
Biotelemetry
Commercial fishing
Data logging
Echo sounding
Echolocation
Echosounders
Ecosystems
Estimates
Fish
Fisheries management
Fishes - physiology
Fishing
Fishing (Recreation)
Forage
Forages
Geography
Information processing
Linear Models
Ornithology
Predation (Biology)
Predator-prey interactions
Predators
Predatory Behavior - physiology
Prey
Recreation
Relative abundance
Remote sensing
Scales
Schools
Software
Source code
Spheniscus demersus
System effectiveness
Transducers
Zoology
Africa
ISSN:1932-6203, 1932-6203
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Popis
Shrnutí:Studies investigating how mobile marine predators respond to their prey are limited due to the challenging nature of the environment. While marine top predators are increasingly easy to study thanks to developments in bio-logging technology, typically there is scant information on the distribution and abundance of their prey, largely due to the specialised nature of acquiring this information. We explore the potential of using single-beam recreational fish-finders (RFF) to quantify relative forage fish abundance and draw inferences of the prey distribution at a fine spatial scale. We compared fish school characteristics as inferred from the RFF with that of a calibrated scientific split-beam echo-sounder (SES) by simultaneously operating both systems from the same vessel in Algoa Bay, South Africa. Customized open-source software was developed to extract fish school information from the echo returns of the RFF. For schools insonified by both systems, there was close correspondence between estimates of mean school depth (R2 = 0.98) and school area (R2 = 0.70). Estimates of relative school density (mean volume backscattering strength; Sv) measured by the RFF were negatively biased through saturation of this system given its smaller dynamic range. A correction factor applied to the RFF-derived density estimates improved the comparability between the two systems. Relative abundance estimates using all schools from both systems were congruent at scales from 0.5 km to 18 km with a strong positive linear trend in model fit estimates with increasing scale. Although absolute estimates of fish abundance cannot be derived from these systems, they are effective at describing prey school characteristics and have good potential for mapping forage fish distribution and relative abundance. Using such relatively inexpensive systems could greatly enhance our understanding of predator-prey interactions.
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Competing Interests: The authors have the following interests: Co-author Loyd C. Edwards is employed by Raggy Charters. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter their adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
Conceived and designed the experiments: AMM AK BM JCC PGR JR JJV LP. Performed the experiments: AMM DM RN LCE JR JJV LP. Analyzed the data: AMM AK BM ML JCC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: AK BM DM JCC. Wrote the paper: AMM BM ML JCC PGR LP. Designed software FISH for hydoacoustic quantification: AK BM.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0140936