Date of Award
June 2018
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Biology
Advisor(s)
Susan E. Parks
Keywords
acoustic, climate, fisheries, haddock, phenology, spawning
Subject Categories
Life Sciences
Abstract
Climate change has the potential to impact many aspects of an organism’s biology, including phenology, the timing of important biological events. The timing of reproduction and spawning events for commercially important fish species is a critically important area of research for fisheries management. Haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus) are commercially important as well as sound-producing, which allows for monitoring via non-invasive passive acoustics. This study presents an application of passive acoustic monitoring to a multi-year dataset to increase understanding of haddock sound production, as well as trends in spawning phenology and behavior. An automatic acoustic detector was able to identify haddock calls within known spawning grounds, and identify the timing of spawning events from fish choruses and calls that have been linked to spawning behavior. When used in conjunction with traditional fisheries research methods such as boat-based surveys, passive acoustic monitoring can be a powerful tool for fisheries biology and management. This is the first study to show the application of these techniques to this commercially important fish species in its natural environment.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
McDonald, Elizabeth, "USING PASSIVE ACOUSTICS TO INFER SPAWNING BEHAVIOR AND PHENOLOGY: A CASE STUDY OF HADDOCK ON GEORGES BANK" (2018). Theses - ALL. 254.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/254
