Develop a technique using an airborne laser radar, to estimate the biomass of fish from the lidar return signal. These include direct sampling, egg sampling, sonar survey, and aerial survey. Each has its limitations. Perhaps the most severe limitation of the surface-based techniques like sampling and sonar is that ships are slow. Only a small fraction of the possible habitat can be surveyed, and the cost is high.
Aerial surveys can cover a much larger area of the ocean, but the data are less reliable.
The system will use a pulsed lidar to profile fish density from a small aircraft. The basic technology was developed by the Department of Defense to detect other objects in the water. The data do not depend on the skill of the observer or on the conditions at the surface, and are thus much more uniform. However, in order to optimize such a system and to predict its performance, the lidar cross sections of fish are required. These measurements have now been made, at least for one species of fish.