Abstract

(Crassostrea virginica) reefs occur in shallow turbid waters along the Texas coast and are an important component of Texas estuaries, providing a wide array of ecosystem services. Oysters are the State?s second largest commercial fishery and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) data indicate that the oyster industry contributed more than $57,600,000 to the State?s economy in 2010. Mapping oyster reefs is a key component of managing oysters. The turbid waters in which oysters reside do not allow for use of remote sensing data from satellites imagery and lidar. To quantify the extent of the oyster habitat within Texas estuaries, the TPWD couples two hydro acoustic technologies: a bathymetric side scan sonar (Teledyne Benthos C3D) and single beam echo sounder (Biosonics DTX). Simultaneously collected, we utilize the echo sounder data to classify the side scan imagery. To accomplish the classification of habitat from echo sounder data we utilized raster reclassification (ArcGIS 10.2) was used to relay the habitat value provided by the echo sounder to the image captured by the side scan sonar. Point locations of oysters were obtained from the reclas-sified raster and point density analysis identified areas of high and lower density oyster habitat. The habitats were ground truth by sampling within the habitats identified. Coupling side scan sonar and habitat classifying echo sounders and relating them through raster reclassification in ArcGIS has proved to be an effective unbiased way of quantify-ing oyster habitats within Texas estuaries.

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