CRIMAC cruise report: Development of acoustic and optic methods for underwater target calssification - G.O. Sars 22.11 - 03.12 2022

The overarching objective of the survey is to collect data to support the CRIMAC activities and to collect data for the LoVe observatory. CRIMAC is a center of research-based innovation funded by the research council of Norway through their center for research-based innovation program (SFI). Sustainable, healthy food production and clean energy production for a growing population are important global goals, and CRIMAC will contribute to these by obtaining accurate underwater observations of gas, fish, nekton and other targets. The data will be used in conjunction with CRIMAC data from other surveys to build a reference data set for optical and acoustic target classification. The classification libraries will be used for developing methods and products toward the fishing industry and marine science. The survey was divided into two legs where leg one mainly focused on trawl instrumentation and data collection for behavioural studies on fish-trawl interactions. The main objectives of this part were to test in-trawl camera systems and data processing from such systems, test and develop trawl instrumentation and acoustic and optic monitoring of herring behaviour in relation to the trawl. The second leg of the survey focused mainly on broad band acoustic data, including sizing of fish using broad banded acoustics, noise estimation, calibration, time series consistency when changing to broad band acoustics, gas seep detection as well as performing the standard IMR LoVe transect.