BioSonics Announces Major Software Release

BioSonics announced the release of VisAcq AutoTrack, a new software module for researchers who use hydroacoustics for fisheries stock assessment. "We believe this to be the most revolutionary fisheries software product in BioSonics' history", stated company President, Tim Acker. VisAcq AutoTrack works with BioSonics widely-used data acquisition program, Visual Acquisition, as a real-time processing tool that automatically builds and records fish track lists. VisAcq AutoTrack calculates the sampled volume and fish density by depth strata. At the conclusion of a mobile hydroacoustic survey, data processing is essentially completed and the user need only export track lists to a CSV file. No further data processing or additional software is required to obtain usable information for fisheries management. Sorting the data from the automatically generated track lists provides the user with information that includes:

• Fish density by depth strata
• Spatial distribution
• Sizing distribution
• Total counts of detected fish

Usability was a key consideration in the development of VisAcq AutoTrack. Before starting a survey, the user configures the single echo and fish track detection parameters and then collects their hydroacoustic data as usual. Fish tracks are recorded automatically and the user can literally walk off the boat upon completion of a mobile survey with data processing essentially completed.

VisAcq AutoTrack is compatible with data files collected using a DT-X echosounder and a reprocessing utility allows for creation of track lists from previously collected files. Conventional data processing methods can take hours of time to generate usable information, thus VisAcq AutoTrack offers a dramatic reduction in time and effort spent for users requiring basic fisheries information.