Project: In Situ Measurements of the Acoustic Properties of Antarctic Krill

Antarctic krill is a key species of the Antarctic marine ecosystem and it is a species that is subject to international assessment and management.  The objectives of proposal are to determine the material properties of Antarctic krill in situ and study their spatial and temporal variability. The Acoustic Properties Of zooPlankton (APOP) previous developed at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) was modified to conduct the measurements. In the first year of this project, the in situ data were collected during an Antarctic cruise of the SO GLOBEC program (NBP0202). Total of 14 APOP casts were made on a number of zooplankton species caught with the MOCNESS and the 1-m Reeve net. Shipboard sound speed and density measurements were also made on the same species used in the APOP casts. Preliminary results are obtained.

Publication resulting from this work:

Chu, D., and Wiebe, P. H. 2005. Measurements of sound-speed and density contrasts of zooplankton in Antarctic waters.  ICES Journal of Marine Science, 62: 818-831.