ME70 Water Column Sonar Data Collected During PC1603

Southeast Fishery-Independent Survey (PC1603, ME70). The NOAA ship Pisces departed Morehead city on 3 July 2016 for a Southeast Fishery-Independent Survey (SEFIS) research cruise in continental shelf and shelf-break waters off the southeastern U.S. SEFIS was created by the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2010 and operates out of the Beaufort Laboratory. The survey was created to conduct applied fishery-independent sampling and related research focusing on the assessment of spatial variability in distribution and abundance of red snapper and other reef species within the snapper-grouper complex, via data collected from fish traps, video cameras, and acoustics. During this survey, 466 sq km of multibeam data were collected from 27 discrete areas found between 33-35 Deg N, 75-80 Deg W.