Echosounder-derived metrics from small-scale coastal surveys identify benthic rocky reef fish hotspots within the acoustic deadzone
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Active acoustic surveys are appealing for monitoring benthic rocky reef fishes like rockfish ( Sebastes spp.) as they cover large areas quickly and are non-destructive, but they are rarely used due to difficulties ensonifying benthic fish in rocky habitats. We conducted echosounder and remote operated vehicle (ROV) surveys at 39 sites in Mowachaht/Muchalaht territory (Nootka Sound, BC, Canada) in August 2023. We examined correlations between an echosounder biomass proxy (nautical area scattering coefficient (NASC)) and ROV benthic fish density using generalized linear models. Increases in the fish biomass proxy (NASC) within 10 m of the bottom was correlated with increasing benthic fish density (deviance explained 52%), suggesting NASC helps predict benthic fish hotspot locations. We compared echosounder and ROV habitat metrics using Spearman's rank correlation tests and found rugosity and slope were comparable across methods with reduced analyst variability in echosounder metrics. This study provides a new and efficient method for identifying rocky reef fish hotspots in near-shore areas that can help fishers avoid non-target species and act as a guide for marine protected area site selection.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".