New platform combines analytic tools for fisheries and habitat assessment
Scientific echosounder manufacturer, BioSonics, Inc., recently announced the release of Visual Aquatic, a new software program that combines biological and habitat assessment into a single post-processing platform. Visual Aquatic includes all of the habitat analysis, editing, and mapping capabilities of BioSonics Visual Habitat software. Introduced in 2012, Visual Habitat was the first hydroacoustic processing software developed specifically for aquatic habitat data including quantitative assessment of seagrass and substrate classifications. Visual Aquatic will replace Visual Habitat and become the new standard for post processing data collected with BioSonics echosounders. Visual Aquatic also incorportates the fisheries processing tools previously available in VisAcq Autotrack, a BioSonics software program developed in 2013. The addition of track editing tools is significant in that users can now visually interpret fisheries data at the level of individual echoes, and make changes and additions to fish track lists prior to export. For users of Visual Aquatic, this means higher accuracy and more confidence in their results.
Like all BioSonics software, Visual Aquatic is freeware available for download and installation with no license necessary. BioSonics philosphy on software is to provide the maximum value to their echosounder clients. Said Tim Acker, BioSonics President/CEO, “Our customers can now visualize, edit, analyze and quantify fish and marine life, aquatic plants, bathymetry, and bottom type all within a single software program. Visual Aquatic gives us a strong foundation for future improvements and adding new functionality.”
View the Visual Aquatic tutorial video here
Download Visual Aquatic data sheet here