Survey Services

Good survey design is critical to getting good results – target species, bathymetric profile of the waterbody and habitat characteristics can all influence survey outcomes. Over more than 50 surveys Infofish has refined techniques and developed tools that enable maxiumum efficiency in survey while maximising the critical data collected. Infofish are one of the global specialists in BioSonics Sid-looking surveys and know that what you do before the survey makes a world of difference in analysing results and removing rework.

Answering questions of fish biomass through direct measurement has been possible only in small scales in the past due to the labour intensive nature of traditional approaches. Technological limitations such as effective field depth during electrofishing have compounded the challenges in obtaining useful data at large scales.

Infofish has made large scale assessments (eg whole of river/impoundment) feasible by combining multiple technologies to survey fish and habitat in a single process. This becomes important when assessing fish/biomass as it enables accurate separation of fish and environmental signals and improves survey efficiency significantly. For example, the cost to survey a single square kilometre of a dam one year ago now covers survey of a 4000 acre waterbody.

Most vessels on the water have some form of bathymetric echosounder, especially with modern fish finding capabilities. It’s remarkable though that good bathymetric maps particularly of rivers and inland water bodies are hard to come by. Social mapping has partially filled that gap but lacks key details useful for fishing decisions and navigation.

Infofish Survey team has to map out bathymetry nearly every time a biomass survey is completed, as well as surveys direct for clients. We have completed just under 200,000 acres of mapping since January 2020.

High resolution sidescan has revolutionised habitat mapping in smaller regions, Infofish took that base process and developed an upscaled version covering entire water bodies including Impoundments, Rivers and even bays and inshore. Additionally Infofish developed a habitat coding process to add extra GIS layers (usually shapefiles) or comma separated data of submerged habitat.

Fish habitat doesn’t end at the water’s edge, the riparian vegetation zone along rivers and impoundments is just as important to fish. Infofish has a multi technology approach to mapping, combining high resolution sidescan that covers underwater habitat to the water’s edge with photography above the water line.

Algal blooms can be a hazard to humans and fish alike, and one of the survey techniques Infofish developed in 2020/21 was the ability to map out an algal bloom completely for depth of bloom in the water column as well as density using the BioSonics unit. Algal mapping can be conducted at the same time as fish surveys, with data extracted in post processing.