The objective of this project was to investigate whether cooperative biomass surveys can be an effective way to manage fisheries at the local scales that are important to predators such as Steller sea lions. To satisfy this objective we conducted wintertime (February-March) acoustic surveys of pollock in the central Aleutian Islands from a commercial vessel equipped with scientific quality ES60 echosounders in 2006, through 2008, and from a NOAA research vessel in 2008. With the fishery vessel and the NOAA vessel acoustic data, we documented the distribution of wintertime aggregations of spawning pollock in the central Aleutian Islands. We found that aggregations were stable within the season and consistent between years.
Purpose:
Cooperative acoustic surveys conducted with the commercial fishing industry to map the winter distrubution of walleye pollock in the Central Aleutian Islands around the port of Adak and determine the feasability of managing the fishery based on cooperative surveys.
Access_Constraints: There are no legal restrictions on access to the data. They reside in public domain and can be freely distributed.
Use_Constraints:
User must read and fully comprehend the metadata prior to use. Applications or inferences derived from the data should be carefully considered for accuracy. Acknowledgement
of NOAA/NMFS/AFSC, as the source from which these data were obtained in any publications and/or other representations of these, data is suggested.
Contact_Organization: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) Resource Ecology and Fisheries Management Division (REFM)
Contact_Organization: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) Resource Ecology and Fisheries Management Division (REFM)