Rockfish Acoustics

high school researcher for rockfish acoustic telemetry study,

University of Washington

Friday Harbor, WA

June-August 2015

with their small home ranges, rockfish were an ideal species to test a marine technology

As a recipient of the Young Investigator Prize, I spent a summer conducting research at the University of Washington Friday Harbor Laboratories. I investigated the ecology and behavior of copper rockfish off the shoreline of San Juan Island using an acoustic telemetry system. An array of hydrophones installed in a cove tracked ten surgically tagged fish within the resolution of a fraction of a meter.

nightly activity (jagged lines on left) and daily inactivity (smooth lines on right) suggest rockfish are nocturnal

I made 3D plots of fish movement from hydrophone (yellow)-gathered acoustic data

I overlaid these plots on a regional map to study habitat preferences

With my experience in marine acoustics, I assisted a mission to recover a CTD, an expensive scientific instrument that was lost off of a research vessel. We found plankton, fish, and a squid, but no CTD.

we sent down an ROV to search

I helped the ROV operator avoid the seafloor by tracking it with acoustics

seafloor

ROV

View my supervisor's report about my work with the rockfish.