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1990, Oceanography 3(1):12–17, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.1990.15
Bioacoustical Oceanography: New Tools for Zooplankton and Micronekton Research in the 1990s
Authors | First Paragraphs | Full Article | Citation
Authors
Charles H. Greene | Ocean Resources and Ecosystems Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Peter H. Wiebe | Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, USA
First Paragraphs
The obstacles confronted by biological oceanographers in determining the distributional patterns of zooplankton and micronekton are formidable. Populations of these animals are patchily distributed in a three-dimensional fluid medium and continuously subjected to the physical processes of turbulent mixing and advection. Furthermore, zooplankton and micronekton are active swimmers, and thus behavior can interact with physical processes to alter their distributional patterns over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. Overcoming such formidable obstacles is essential in pursuing one of the primary goals of biological oceanography--understanding the processes regulating the distribution of oceanic populations in time and space.
Acoustical techniques offer a number of advantages in the above pursuit; they are relatively nonintrusive, provide distributional data in near-real time, and can exhibit high spatial resolution. In addition, acoustical systems capable of producing size as well as abundance data for zooplankton and micronekton are becoming increasingly available to the oceanographic community at large. It is expected that the 1990s will be a decade in which bioacoustical oceanography has a dramatic effect on the way zooplankton and micronekton research is conducted at sea.
Full Article
Citation
Greene, C.H., and P.H Wiebe. 1990. Bioacoustical oceanography: New tools for zooplankton and micronekton research in the 1990s. Oceanography 3(1):12–17, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.1990.15.