Joint U.S.-Canada Integrated Ecosystem and Pacific Hake Acoustic Trawl Survey (transects)

This layer is intended to represent the geographic extent of NOAA Fisheries’ Joint U.S.-Canada Integrated Ecosystem and Pacific Hake Acoustic Trawl Survey. The Joint U.S.-Canada Integrated Ecosystem and Pacific Hake Acoustic Trawl Survey started in 1977 and is a collaborative effort between the Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Fisheries and Oceans Canada Pacific Region. This survey produces the Pacific hake biomass estimate that is essential to the management of the west coast fishery. Data collected are used to generate biological information and inform stock assessments made by the Hake Treaty Joint Technical Committee, a body formed by the U.S.-Canada International Hake/Whiting Treaty. The survey is typically conducted on a biennial basis. Because this is an international survey, two research vessels cover the entire U.S. and Canadian West Coasts. The survey design includes 10-nm spaced transects that run approximately perpendicular to the coast for the area that extends from Point Conception, California in the south to the West Coast of Vancouver Island in the north, and 20-nm transects north of WCVI to Dixon Entrance, Alaska. Transects are conducted using a NOAA Fishery Survey Vessel equipped with scientific echosounders and fishing nets to validate fish aggregations identified in the acoustic data. Midwater trawls are also equipped with a stereo camera to assist in determining the species composition of collected organisms.

This data product is intended to help communicate the geographic extent of NOAA Fisheries’ scientific surveys on the continental margin of the U.S. West Coast. NOAA Fisheries conducts numerous scientific surveys to inform the status of fish stocks and protected resources. For the West Coast Region and Pacific Fisheries Management Council, more than a dozen surveys are conducted routinely across the continental margin, focusing either on pelagic or demersal species or the ecosystem as a whole. They collect a variety of biological and environmental data to provide a synoptic view of the habitats and ecosystems for which the target species inhabit. The surveys utilize varying designs including fixed stations where a number of operations are centered, transect lines where fishery acoustic data are continually collected, and stratified random sampling, to name a few.