Autonomous Data Sampling for High-Resolution Spatiotemporal Fish Biomass Estimates

Abstract

Many key ecological dynamics such as biomass distributions are only detectable on a fine spatiotemporal scale. Autonomous data collection with Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) creates new possibilities to sample aquatic data with high resolution over large areas by being cost efficient. However, the extent of spatial coverage and final resolution of sampling remain uncertain due to the novelty of the technology. Further, there is no established method for analysing such fine-scale autocorrelated data without aggregation, compromising the sought resolution. We here used a USV with an echosounder, a conductivity-temperature sensor and a flourometer to collect data from April-July 2019-2023 in a 60x80km area in the central Baltic Sea. The USV covered a total distance of 8000 nmi, over 42-81 days per year, with an average speed of 0.5m/s. We combined the hydroacoustic data with publically available hydrographic variables from Copernicus Marine Service Information (CMSI) to describe seasonal distribution dynamics of a small pelagic fish community. Key oceanographic variables collected by the USV were correlated with CMSI estimates at daily/monthly resolution, respectively, to test for suitability to scale (Temperature 0.99/0.97; Salinity -0.77/-0.26; Chlorophyll-a 0.12/0.28). We investigated two approaches of Species Distribution Models (SDMs): generalized additive models (GAM) versus spatiotemporal generalized linear mixed effect models (GLMM). The GLMMs explained the observed data better than the GAMs (R2 0.31 and 0.20, respectively). The addition of environmental variables increased the explanatory capability of GAM and GLMM by 25% and ~3%, respectively. Due to the high resolution, we found significant amounts of autocorrelation (R: 0.30-0.05) across more than 50 lags of observation. However, we found that diel patterns in fish detection strongly affected the abundance estimates due to diel vertically migrating species hiding in the ‘acoustic dead zone’ near the seabed. Such dynamics could only be estimated and corrected for in predictions on the high-resolution data, complicating the trade-off between autocorrelation and high-resolution for SDMs. We compared estimates and effect sizes/directions in identical SDMs on 2x2km/month aggregated (i.e non-autocorrelated) observations and non-aggregated (i.e. autocorrelated) observations, and found relatively little difference in spatiotemporal estimates. For the first time, we predicted the distribution of a small pelagic fish community at a high spatial resolution, in an area essential to breeding top predators, opening up for new applications in ecological studies locally and globally.

Keywords: species distribution modelling, Remote Sensing, USV, hydro-acoustic, spatiotemporal modelling, small pelagic community