Information extraction, scalable processing, open-source development, and community engagement: Data science in fisheries acoustics

The past decade has seen an explosion of the availability of fisheries acoustic data, driven primarily by the successful integration of echosounder on a variety of ocean observing platforms and a broader adoption of active acoustics as a tool for ocean sensing. However, we are just at the cusp of creating data processing techniques and workflows that can truly transform these data into information. In this talk, I will discuss recent advancements in multiple areas that I believe when combined, harbor the potential to accelerate research progress in fisheries acoustics toward making revolutionary changes: integration of physics-based models and data-driven methods, including machine learning; cloud computing; open-source software development; interoperable data and data standards; and community engagement, which plays a crucial role in driving rapid exchange of ideas and spurring innovation in not only fisheries acoustics, but also the broader oceanography and geoscience fields.