The zunibal precatch system: a new acoustic buoy to monitor and discriminate pelagic fish remotely in real time

Abstract

Fishery acoustic equipment has been used for decades to locate and estimate fish shoals. However, hull-mounted equipment has limitations, such as losing information in the first few meters of the water column and requiring the vessel to pass over shoals, altering their behavior. Acoustic buoys, popular in tropical tuna fisheries, transmit relative abundance information via satellite. They are low-cost but have limitations like low data resolution, delayed transmissions, and lack of calibration, affecting accuracy. The Zunibal PRECATCH system is an echosounder buoy designed to overcome these issues. It provides remote, real-time, high-res- olution acoustic monitoring of the entire water column without disturbing the pelagic environment, helping to correct biases and avoid reactions to the vessel, thus offering more accurate data for sustainable fisheries management.