• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.265-275
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• 2005

A prerequisite for deriving the abundance estimates from acoustic surveys for commercially important fish species is the identification of target strength measurements for selected fish species. In relation to these needs, the goal of this study was to construct a data bank for converting the acoustic measurements of target strength to biological estimates of fish length and to simultaneously obtain the target strength-fish length relationship. Laboratory measurements of target strength on 15 commercially important fish species were carried out at five frequencies of 50, 70, 75, 120 and 200 kHz by single and split beam methods under the controlled conditions of the fresh and the sea water tanks with the 389 samples of dead and live fishes. The target strength pattern on individual fish of each species was measured as a function of tilt angle, ranging from $-45^{\circ}$ (head down aspect) to $+45^{\circ}$ (head up aspect) in $0.2^{\circ}$ intervals, and the averaged target strength was estimated by assuming the tilt angle distribution as N $(-5.0^{\circ},\;15.0^{\circ})$. The TS to fish length relationship for each species was independently derived by a least-squares fitting procedure. Also, a linear regression analysis for all species was performed to reduce the data to a set of empirical equations showing the variation of target strength to a fish length, wavelength and fish species. For four of the frequencies (50, 75, 120 and 200 kHz), an empirical model for fish target strength (TS, dB) averaged over the dorsal sapect of 602 fishes of 10 species and which spans the fish length (L, m) to wavelength (\Lambda,\;m)$ ratio between 5 and 73 was derived: $TS=19.44\;Log(L)+0.56\;Log(\Lambda)-30.9,\;(r^2=0.53)$.