GIS ‘ChartMaster’ for aquatic living resources research in Antarctic

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) find increasing application in different fields of modern oceanography, marine biology and fishery monitoring. The Russian Federal Research Institute of Fishery and Oceanography (VNIRO) has developed the new GIS ‘ChartMaster’ designed for processing the data provided by the fisheries oceanographic surveys. This software allows:

• to analyze the data of hydro acoustic, trawling, trap and scuba-diving surveys;
• to draw maps of spatial distribution of species biomass and abundance;
• to estimate the instant biomass in the surveyed area;
• to carry out the survey planning and designing;
• to carry out adaptive planning during the survey in order to localize and outline the areas of high concentrations of commercial species.

As an example of the GIS «ChartMaster» application for studying aquatic living resources in the Antarctic waters:

• The Chart of possible catches of toothfish carried out by the Spanish longline (in dimension kg) is presented. The chart was calculated according to the catch results of the Russian fishing vessels in the Antarctic area (from 71º26.4’ S to 72º20.3’ S and from 174º11.9’ E to 177º08.6’ E ) during January-February, 2004.
• The spatial distribution of krill density (in dimension ton/nmile²) and estimation of krill biomass (with confidence interval calculated by stochastic simulation method) off the South Georgia Island is presented. These results were computed by data of the hydroacoustic survey carried out by the Russian R/V «Atlantida» in February-March, 2002.