Pacific Sardine Characteristics Affecting the Conduct of an Acoustic Clutter Experiment off the West Coast of the United States
Abstract
The Office of Naval Research is sponsoring an experiment off the West Coast of the United States during the summer of 2012 that is designed to obtain clutter statistics from biological targets. Schools of fish are the dominant cause of biological clutter. In recent years, Pacific sardines have been by far the most abundant species of schooling fish off the West Coast. Therefore, sardines are the best candidates to be clutter targets. In preparation for the experiment, the characteristics of Pacific sardines that are pertinent to the clutter experiment have been examined. These characteristics include abundance, summertime geographical distribution, depth distribution, size distributions of individual sardines, school size distributions, school shape, sardine packing densities within a school, and spacings between schools. This report contains the results of this examination. In addition, the Pacific sardine fleet in Washington and Oregon waters is described and suggestions are made for locating concentrations of sardines.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 15, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA561893
Entities
People
- Richard H. Love