Conditions for precise measurement of in situ fish target strength (TS) are empirically studied and two indexes are introduced for this purpose. One is the number of fish in the effective reverberation volume which contributes echo tormation at a certain instant and the other is the percentage of the multiple echoes which is derived from a residual of the single echo extraction. With the decrease of both indexes measured target strength approach a certain asymptotic value which is admitted as reliable from the past study. This shows the existence of some threshold values and below these threshold values TS measurement will be successful. The effectiveness of both indexes is confirmed by the data set obtained from one large same fish school in the eastern shelf of Bering sea during the intership calibration between Japanese and U.S. vessels on 15 and 16 August 1991.

Generalized additive models (GAM), a nonparametric regression method with less restrictive statistical assumptions than traditional regression methods, were used to model the trend in mean abundance of Bering Sea walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma) as a function of ocean environmental conditions including water column depth, temperature at 50 m, and depth of the thermocline. Acoustic survey data collected in the summers of 1988 and 1991 were used to test these relationships. In both surveys, mean walleye pollock abundance was highest in areas having a 70–130 m depth range and where the 50-m temperature was close to 2.5 °C. Thermocline depth, while not itself significant, had a significant effect on walleye pollock abundance through interactions with both bottom depth and temperature at 50 m. Walleye pollock in the top 50 m of the water column (mostly juveniles) were influenced differently by temperature and thermocline depth than the adult walleye pollock, which were generally deeper in the water column. The depth, temperature, and thermocline preferences of walleye pollock are hypothesized to be linked to food availability which is, in turn, related to temperature regimes or fronts along the Bering Sea shelf slope.

Serial correlation in data collected from fisheries acoustic surveys may have an effect on the precision and accuracy of fish abundance estimates. A simple random sample approach to the data analysis yields unreliable confidence intervals for mean population density when the degree of serial correlation in the data is high. The results of a simulation analysis indicate that more reliable confidence intervals can be obtained using cluster sampling estimation techniques.Key words: acoustic surveys, fish abundance estimates, cluster sampling, serial correlation

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