Skip Navigation


ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil Advance Access originally published online on January 31, 2007
ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil 2007 64(3):551-558; doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsl043
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
64/3/551    most recent
fsl043v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Chakraborty, B.
Right arrow Articles by Janakiraman, G.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Chakraborty, B.
Right arrow Articles by Janakiraman, G.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 2007 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Published by Oxford Journals. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Acoustic characterization of seafloor habitats on the western continental shelf of India

Bishwajit Chakraborty1,, Vasudev Mahale1, Gajanan Navelkar1, B. Ramalingeswara Rao1, R. G. Prabhudesai1, Baban Ingole1 and G. Janakiraman2

1 National Institute of Oceanography, Dona Paula, Goa 403 004, India
2 National Institute of Ocean Technology, Velachery, Tambaram Road, Chennai 601 302, India

Correspondence to B. Chakraborty: tel: +91 832 2450 450; fax: +91 832 2450 602/603; e-mail: bishwajt{at}nio.org

Chakraborty, B., Mahale, V., Navelkar, G., Rao, B. R., Prabhudesai, R. G., Ingole, B., and Janakirinam, G. 2007. Acoustic characterization of seafloor habitats on the western continental shelf of India. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 64: 551–558.

This is a study of the interaction effects of the dual-frequency (210 and 33 kHz) backscatter signal with seafloor sediment and benthic biota along a transect in water 27–83 m deep offshore of the Goa region of India's central west coast. Estimation of the power-law exponent using seafloor topographic data provided equivalent values even when using dual high-frequency systems for different grain-size sediments. Backscatter signals corrected from system-related gain, etc., reveal better correlations with sedimentary and benthic parameters than the estimated coherence parameters (using echo peaks). Statistically, correlations are significant for the 210 kHz backscatter signal with sand and calcium carbonate (CaCO3) sediment content. Also, correlations are higher for macrobenthic biomass (wet weight) and population density with a 210 kHz backscatter strength, emphasizing the dominant seawater–seafloor interface scattering process. For 33 kHz backscatter strength, the absence of such correlations indicates a different scattering process, i.e. dominant sediment volume scattering attributable to the comparatively lower signal attenuation. Additionally, to validate the results, the backscatter signals from other locations in the vicinity of this transect were considered.

Keywords: backscatter strength, benthic habitats, echo peaks, seafloor classifications, sediment grain size

Received 19 August 2005; accepted 1 November 2006; advance access publication 31 January 2007.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.