Mike + Alex Meeting; Dec 13

Meeting Agenda

1. Pingfest. What happened, what went well, what needs to happen next
2. Stationary acoustics
3. GitHub
4. Funding and opportunities for next year
5. Misc.

Agenda specific notes

1. PingFest
   1. Progress made coding models (both random forest and neural network)
      
   2. Based on initial model runs, certain variables that seem logically important to include need to be tossed from the model (such as body size and range/depth). We are also concerned about fish that weren’t very active - i.e., were there certain fish that were just getting dragged along or based on our qualitative notes were there certain fish that were in poor condition? These fish may be oriented inconsistently compared to ‘active’ fish. Jer and I put a shiny app together to suss this out.
      
   3. Need to understand what’s going on with frequency ramping in both calibration and experimental data
      • At all nominal frequencies, TS variability increases and absolute response becomes higher in systematic way
        
        

        Figure 1: Noticable frequency ramp at the tail end of each transducer

      • This is also seen in a narrowing of beam compensation at high frequencies compared to lower frequencies (within a single transducer; across all transducers)
        
        

        Figure 2: Narrowing of beam compensation around center axis. All points should be compensated to 6dB but compensation with wideband data doesn’t seem to function the same way we understand it to work with narrowband. Only lake trout data presented, but similar pattern across all other species

   4. New post-doc in place for March, more fieldwork will be planned
      
   5. Report due to CIEE at beginning of June. Also need to consider what a publication from this might look like. As of now I don’t think we understand the acoustic processing well enough to be certain of any model predictions. Possible that a publication discussing what broadband can/can’t tell us is a place to start. See where modelling progresses to…

       

2. Stationary acoustics
   1. Had a really good chat with Haley at Echoview before pingFest. Have a definite way forward incorporating single targets and volume targets
   2. Template and COM process is fairly setup, but I’m attempting to streamline process some still. Looking to get everything up on GitHub
   3. Spent some time getting all my other non-pingData QA/QCd today (see interactive table in Misc. section below)
   4. With entire new (and final!) EV processing workflow, aim to get at least 1 lake fully processed before leaving for x-mas

       

3. GitHub
   1. Now on GitHub. Seems super useful, and has been invaluable working on things with Jer. Officially drank the kool-aid.

       

4. Funding and opportunities for next year
   1. Currently no funding in place. Hoping to have a conversation of what financial support for next year could look like
   2. MITACS Graduate Research Award: Provides up to $6000 for 3-6 months abroad working in a host-lab. Competition currently closed, but… looks like very non-strings attached money, and would give the opportunity to sit-in with another research group in another country while writing up my thesis. Quick look shows that some of these places might be doable (and fun) on that budget. For example, South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity would be really neat and probably doable for 6K - flights would be around 2K all in from Thunder Bay, Airbnb’s can be had for $30-60, and cost of living is fairly low. Group of researchers actually looks great and relavent (lots of animal movement, predator-prey people), and location looks pretty sweet…

       

5. Misc.
   1. Made a fun little markdown to QA/QC my ELA sonde data here. Also sent all these data and markdown along to Chris so that they can be contributed to the ELA database.