Consumer-Grade Side-Scan Sonar Imagery of Invasive Silver Carp in the Lamine River and Blackwater River, Missouri, 2015

In March and September of 2015, the USGS demonstrated the utility of side-scan sonar to image large densities of invasive carp and estimate water volume on the Lamine and Blackwater Rivers, Cooper County, Missouri, USA. A 30-kilometer reach of the Lamine River and 20-kilometer reach of the Blackwater River were surveyed using a Humminbird 1198c sonar system. Fish sampling was conducted after seasonal side-scan sonar surveys were completed in 2015. Five sampling trips followed the winter surveys in March, and three trips followed the summer surveys in September and October to collect fish samples and associated measurements. Proprietary sonar data were converted to PNG image files (i.e., rectified and speed-corrected) using SonarTRX Pro. The resulting data set includes two CSV files (NavTrackData.csv and SonarTRX_KML_Data.csv) and a KMZ file of original rectified images for a mosaic display in Google Earth Pro. Fish targets were enumerated in sonar imagery for each river. Following side-scan sonar recordings, fish were sampled using trammel nets. Water volumes were estimated from the side-scan sonar imagery, utilizing two methods: satellite-delineation and sonar-delineation.