Acoustic counting and monitoring of shad fish populations

To estimate the population of migrating shad fish in rivers, a method analysing acoustic signals during spawning is proposed. This method is based on a short-term spectral analysis, combined with a classification with a Gaussian mixture model, it results in detecting and counting shad spawning acts. The application has been implemented on a smartphone, which serves as an automatic counting device and a sound recorder, integrating a number of communication facilities. In terms of detection, the results obtained are very promising, although they show a bias of estimation. The deployment of this device will help assess the population of migrating shad fish and monitor their behaviour from year to year.