Evaluation of sound extinction and echo interference in densely aggregated zooplankton

The investigation of sound extinction and echo interference is important as regards the accurate assessment of the abundance of densely aggregated zooplankton. To study these effects, the analytical model describing sound backscattering by an aggregation of isotropic scatterers (Rytov et al. 1978, Sun & Gimenez 1992) has been extended to the case of densely aggregated elongated zooplankton. The evaluation of the effects in the case of a dense krill aggregation demonstrates that they can be significant and should be taken into account.