FLOE can be used to survey many types of fish in North America.

Ocean Remote Sensing Working Group

Dr. James Churnside, Lead

This group applies lidar techniques to identify and count fish populations in coastal waters. Instruments developed at ETL can be easily mounted in a small aircraft, providing much extended coverage over commonly-used surface techniques. Current research is aimed at identifying specific fish species and at development of new techniques to identify biologically-stressed estuaries.

ETL scientists, collaborating with Airborne Technologies, Inc. and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), just finished a survey of marine debris in the subtropical convergence zone in the north Pacific. The flights confirm that these convergence regions contain high densities of marine debris, including many ghost nets. More ...

James Churnside along with William G. Pichel, NESDIS, were given a group medal for development of a technique to detect ghostnets in the open ocean using satellites and aircraft. More...