Hello everyone!
My name is Burak Saygili. I earned a bachelor’s degree in IT education and later combined my skills in IT with fisheries science during my master’s studies. I then completed a PhD in fisheries acoustics.
I have studied on a new broadband TS measurement system at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology**,** Japan under the supervision of Prof. Kazuo AMAKASU in order to measure TS of fluid-like organism during my PhD education.
After my graduation, I started at The University of British Columbia, Canada as a postdoctoral researcher under Prof. Andrew Trites. I processed the acoustic data to understand whether enough prey (adult salmon) is available to Resident killer whales at the North and South of the Vancouver Island.
Very exciting to be a part of this!
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Hi all!
I’m Abbie Smith - I’m a researcher with the Australian Antarctic Division in Tasmania, Australia. My research interest is on Antarctic krill contributions to biogeochemical cycles. My background is in Southern Ocean trace metal cycles and have only come to use echosounders since finishing my PhD. I’m currently working on upward-looking echosounder data from our seafloor landers and long-string moorings to progress krill biomass and flux dynamics in East Antarctica with Martin Cox - check out our recent paper on these moorings here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq5564.
Looking forward to chatting more acoustics with everyone! 
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Hi all!
My name is Alex Slonimer. I got my start at ASL Environmental Sciences processing ice profiling sonar data, and that eventually led me to working with four-frequency AZFPs. I realized that the multi-frequency data had a lot of potential for machine learning, so I pursued a Master’s degree at the University of Victoria (completed in 2022), where I focused on semantic segmentation of juvenile salmon and herring schools in echograms.
I’m now at Ocean Networks Canada, where I make sure our active acoustic devices (ADCPs, AZFPs, and Biosonics systems) are properly configured, deployed, and working as expected. A big part of my current work is developing new echosounder data products to make it easier for researchers, students, and the public to download, use, and interpret acoustic data.
I’m excited to connect and learn from others here!
-Alex
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Hello everyone!
My name is Allison White. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center. My background is in biology and fisheries science. I completed a Master’s degree at Virginia Tech researching variability in life history models of Atlantic weakfish (Cynoscion regalis). Although the practical applications of stock assessment science seemed rewarding, I wanted to spend more time at sea and became more interested in the gaps in available fisheries data that I was using for my thesis, especially in the U.S. Southern Atlantic. This led me down the rabbit hole of why there were data gaps in southeastern U.S., which led to advanced technologies for surveying untrawlable habitats, which led to active acoustics!
I landed a PhD position in Kevin Boswell’s lab at Florida International University, where I learned all about acoustics and got hands on experience with split-beam and multibeam echosounders, autonomous surface vessels, Echoview, and much more. Since then, most of my research has focused on the application of echosounders and optical gears to study the spatial distribution, abundance estimation, and echoclassification of reef-associated fishes in the northern Gulf of Mexico. I joined the Advanced Technologies and Innovations branch of the Southeast Fisheries Science Center in 2024 to help facilitate and support the use of active acoustics in our region’s fishery-independent surveys.
I’m excited to see the great topics already posted on this discourse and look forward to interacting with everyone!
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