Development of an open source software to transform acoustic data for classification of benthic habitats

Knowledge and detailed mapping of benthic habitats is a key tool for the development of strategies for coastal ecosystem management. However, existing methods are used as a “black box” where the user cannot know the equations and criteria used in the acoustic corrections, nor inspect and modify the statistical and computational protocols used too. The RMyP is developing an open protocol for marine habitat classification, from the field techniques and sampling details to large data manipulation techniques and statistical data analyses. Several echosounders will be operated from small boats, with a resulting low cost. Computing and statistical methods will be made open and free to allow for their posterior use, modification and improvement by other researchers. A fundamental point in the design of an open protocol is the independence from commercial software. Thus, a software is being built which uses the raw data from the echosounder as an input, generating energy matrixes with the corrected values (transmission loss and depth adjustment) as an output, for their further statistical analysis.