California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI): Acoustic and Trawl Data . In California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) Collection

The California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) are a unique partnership of the California Department of Fish & Wildlife, NOAA Fisheries Service and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The organization was formed in 1949 to study the ecological aspects of the sardine population collapse off California. Today the focus has shifted to the study of the marine environment off the coast of California, the management of its living resources, and monitoring the effects of climate variability and climate change.

CalCOFI conducts quarterly cruises off southern & central California, collecting a suite of hydrographic and biological data on station and underway. Data collected at depths down to 500 m include: temperature, salinity, oxygen, phosphate, silicate, nitrate and nitrite, chlorophyll, transmissometer, PAR, C14 primary productivity, and zooplankton biomass.

A combination of multi-frequency acoustics and midwater trawl samples were used to estimate the biomass and distribution of mesopelagic and epipelagic (sardine and anchovy) fishes as well as macrozooplankon and identify areas of enhanced productivity and concentration in the southern California Current.

Acoustic has been used to remotely detect aquatic organisms for more than half a century. As a non-invasive technique, the use of sound provides a real-time high resolution technique to study aquatic organisms, both quantitatively and qualitatively, with the capacity to reveal complex dynamics of the local biology that include their response to micro- and meso-scale oceanographic features, such as fronts. The methods and potential to identify different groups remotely have improved as the technology has evolved, with the addition of correction factors, development of calibration procedures, and studies of the relationship between echo amplitude and size, material properties of organisms and orientation with respect to the acoustic beam. A multi-frequency acoustic system takes advantage of the differential response of targets of different sizes and composition to different wave lengths, thus enabling discrimination of small organisms (i.e. zooplankton) from large ones (i.e. fish) and fish with air-filled swimbladders from those without.

Tony Koslow, now emeritus, led the acoustics group at Scripps, which collected acoustic data on the CalCOFI and California Current Ecosystem Long-term Ecological Research (CCE-LTER) cruises. This acoustic data are the primary subject of the collection here. The data come from up to 4 cruises per year from 2009 – 2015. Each cruise covers 6 or more transects (each 500 km or more) from San Diego to north of Pt Conception (Map of transects). Each cruise is ~16 days duration, with the 5-frequency echo sounder collecting data on each frequency from the surface to 1000 m depth continuously. For these CalCOFI cruises the primary focus of the Koslow lab was to generate acoustic data that can be used to obtain snapshots of ecological populations and monitor changes. Trawl nets were also used to sample species directly, and to help model the acoustic backscatter in relation to the actual species in the water. These data are also included in the collection.

In 2004, the CalCOFI surveys became part of the LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) ecological studies network as a site to understand the pelagic ecosystem of the California Current. The CCE-LTER project has expanded CalCOFI objectives, including the addition of midwater trawl and acoustic sampling. LTER also conducts quasi-annual process cruises in the CalCOFI region and operates autonomous gliders along lines 80 and 90 (http://spray.ucsd.edu/).