Polyline depicting the extent along the transit where multibeam sonar data were acquired using the Reson 7111 and 8160 mulltbeam sonar systems. Multibeam echosounder data were acquired and processed according to NOAA OCS hydrographic standards.

A custom designed Klein 7180 towed sonar was deployed from the NOAA Ship FAIRWEATHER to determine its value of acoustic backscatter as a habitat defining character. A Sonardyne Fusion USBL system was used to estimate underwater positioning of the towfish using an omnidirectional Wideband submini beacon operating in external trigger mode. Navigation data were logged in QINSy and exported into a text file. The towfish positions were then smoothed in Matlab using a custom script that implemented a weighted Hamming filter, using a window of 11 data points. These points represent the smoothed USBL navigation data for the Klein 7180 towfish during the Arctic reconnaissance transit from Dutch Harbor to Kotzebue. These smoothed towfish navigation data, however, will NOT ultimately be reinserted back into the sonar files for mosaicking and analysis. Rather, another navigation smoothing routine will be used for the final product.

A custom designed Klein 7180 towed sonar was deployed from the NOAA Ship FAIRWEATHER to determine its value of acoustic backscatter as a habitat defining character. A Sonardyne Fusion USBL system was used to estimate underwater positioning of the towfish using an omnidirectional Wideband submini beacon operating in external trigger mode. Navigation data were logged in QINSy and exported into a text file. The towfish positions were then smoothed in Matlab using a custom script that implemented a weighted Hamming filter, using a window of 11 data points. These points represent the smoothed USBL navigation data for the Klein 7180 towfish during the Arctic reconnaissance transit from Dutch Harbor to Kotzebue. These smoothed towfish navigation data, however, will NOT ultimately be reinserted back into the sonar files for mosaicking and analysis. Rather, another navigation smoothing routine will be used for the final product.

A custom designed Klein 7180 towed sonar was deployed from the NOAA Ship FAIRWEATHER to determine its value of acoustic backscatter as a habitat defining character. A Sonardyne Fusion USBL system was used to estimate underwater positioning of the towfish using an omnidirectional Wideband submini beacon operating in external trigger mode. Navigation data were logged in QINSy and exported into a text file. The towfish positions were then smoothed in Matlab using a custom script that implemented a weighted Hamming filter, using a window of 11 data points. These points represent the smoothed USBL navigation data for the Klein 7180 towfish during the Arctic reconnaissance transit from Dutch Harbor to Kotzebue. These smoothed towfish navigation data, however, will NOT ultimately be reinserted back into the sonar files for mosaicking and analysis. Rather, another navigation smoothing routine will be used for the final product.

A custom designed Klein 7180 towed sonar was deployed from the NOAA Ship FAIRWEATHER to determine its value of acoustic backscatter as a habitat defining character. A Sonardyne Fusion USBL system was used to estimate underwater positioning of the towfish using an omnidirectional Wideband submini beacon operating in external trigger mode. Navigation data were logged in QINSy and exported into a text file. The towfish positions were then smoothed in Matlab using a custom script that implemented a weighted Hamming filter, using a window of 11 data points. These points represent the smoothed USBL navigation data for the Klein 7180 towfish during the Arctic reconnaissance transit from Dutch Harbor to Kotzebue. These smoothed towfish navigation data, however, will NOT ultimately be reinserted back into the sonar files for mosaicking and analysis. Rather, another navigation smoothing routine will be used for the final product.

A custom designed Klein 7180 towed sonar was deployed from the NOAA Ship FAIRWEATHER to determine its value of acoustic backscatter as a habitat defining character. A Sonardyne Fusion USBL system was used to estimate underwater positioning of the towfish using an omnidirectional Wideband submini beacon operating in external trigger mode. Navigation data were logged in QINSy and exported into a text file. The towfish positions were then smoothed in Matlab using a custom script that implemented a weighted Hamming filter, using a window of 11 data points. These points represent the smoothed USBL navigation data for the Klein 7180 towfish during the Arctic reconnaissance transit from Dutch Harbor to Kotzebue. These smoothed towfish navigation data, however, will NOT ultimately be reinserted back into the sonar files for mosaicking and analysis. Rather, another navigation smoothing routine will be used for the final product.

A custom designed Klein 7180 towed sonar was deployed from the NOAA Ship FAIRWEATHER to determine its value of acoustic backscatter as a habitat defining character. A Sonardyne Fusion USBL system was used to estimate underwater positioning of the towfish using an omnidirectional Wideband submini beacon operating in external trigger mode. Navigation data were logged in QINSy and exported into a text file. The towfish positions were then smoothed in Matlab using a custom script that implemented a weighted Hamming filter, using a window of 11 data points. These points represent the smoothed USBL navigation data for the Klein 7180 towfish during the Arctic reconnaissance transit from Dutch Harbor to Kotzebue. These smoothed towfish navigation data, however, will NOT ultimately be reinserted back into the sonar files for mosaicking and analysis. Rather, another navigation smoothing routine will be used for the final product.

The core function of the Resource Assessment and Conservation Engineering (RACE) Groundfish Assessment Program (GAP) is to conduct quantitative fishery surveys and related ecological and oceanographic research to measure and describe the distribution and abundance of commercially important fish and crab stocks in the eastern Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, Gulf of Alaska. As part of the quality control and general documentation of these efforts, digital photographs are taken during each of the surveys. These photos are stored on an AFSC server as .jpg files.

The core function of the Resource Assessment and Conservation Engineering (RACE) Division is to conduct quantitative fishery surveys and related ecological and oceanographic research to measure and describe the distribution and abundance of commercially important fish and crab stocks in the eastern Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska. This includes measuring the abundance of fish (including rockfishes) in rocky untrawlable areas. To accomplish this, we are mapping untrawlable areas using an ME70 multibeam data. These data area stored as image files ArcGIS shapefiles

The Arctic Aerial Calibration Experiments (ACEs) study was designed to evaluate the ability of UAS technology (i.e., airframe, payloads, sensors, and software) to detect cetaceans, identify individuals to species, estimate group size, identify calves, and estimate density in arctic waters, relative to conventional aerial surveys conducted by human observers in fixed wing aircraft and to photographic strip transect data collected from the manned aircraft. The ACEs’ imagery described here was collected and analyzed in order to conduct a 3-way comparison of data and derived statistics from the following: • Observers in the manned aircraft; • Digital photographs from cameras mounted to the manned aircraft; • Digital photographs from cameras mounted to the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).