CSA Ocean Sciences has announced an expansion of its water-column acoustic capabilities through the acquisition of a licensed installation of Echoview software, a leading scientific platform for the processing and analysis of active acoustic data.
CSA operates scientific echosounder systems—including Kongsberg Discovery EK-series split-beam instruments—to collect calibrated water-column backscatter data during offshore surveys. These systems provide high-resolution measurements throughout the water column, enabling detection and characterization of fish aggregations, scattering layers, suspended particulates, and gas seeps.
While advanced acoustic instrumentation is increasingly deployed across offshore industries, rigorous and transparent post-processing remains essential to generating defensible scientific results. Echoview software is widely used by federal agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and by universities conducting fisheries and oceanographic research. The software supports calibration management, noise removal, multi-frequency integration, and quantitative target delineation within a reproducible analytical framework. Although standard in research settings, in-house licenses remain less common within the consulting sector.
CSA’s water-column acoustic work spans baseline ecological assessments, fisheries investigations, and studies supporting emerging offshore industries. In deep-sea environments, for example, scientific echosounders are used to evaluate vertical distribution patterns of pelagic organisms, including diel vertical migration (DVM)—a fundamental ecological process in which organisms move vertically through the water column in response to light and predation pressures. Characterizing DVM and midwater ecosystems is increasingly important in deep-sea mining baseline studies and environmental impact assessments, where understanding biological structure throughout the full water column is essential.
“High-quality acoustic instrumentation is only part of the equation,” said Dr. Eddie Hughes, senior marine scientist at CSA. “The ability to process calibrated backscatter data with transparency and scientific rigor is what transforms raw measurements into defensible environmental insight. Echoview allows us to apply the same analytical standards used in federal and academic research programs directly within a consulting framework—whether we are characterizing fish aggregations, evaluating water-column structure, or assessing diel vertical migration patterns in deep-sea environments.”
