An airborne lidar survey technique would be an important survey tool for fisheries managers. It would allow entire habitats to be surveyed quickly and inexpensively. Surface surveys would not be eliminated, but could be directed by the results of aerial surveys. Also, the degree to which the surface survey results were representative of the entire habitat could be evaluated. ETL has been working with the South West Fisheries Science Center of the National Marine Fisheries Service and the California State Department of Fish and Game to develop an airborne lidar for surveys of sardines.
Sardines are of interest for a number of reasons.
They congregate in schools near the surface, and this makes them an ideal target for the lidar. Also, their habitat seems to be expanding northward into northern California and even Oregon, and this expansion makes a cost-effective survey technique highly desirable. Those tests were very successful. Lidar results were highly correlated with echo sounder data and with direct trawls. The data from those tests have been used to develop data processing algorithms that can be used to obtain quantitative estimates of biomass from the lidar returns.