Hi!

My name is Julek. I started going to sea as an observer when I was fresh out of university. Working in the herring fleet, I would peek over the captains shoulder and watch the forward sonar turn red, indicating it was time to set the seine net. Since then, I’ve been fascinated how fisherman and scientists use sonar technology to make management decisions. A few years later, I was handed my first acoustic dataset by Graham Sherwood at Gulf of Maine Research Institute, and it inspired me to continue down a research rabbit hole in underwater acoustics.

In my research, I’ve used fishing vessel mounted acoustics to study herring spawning aggregations in coastal Maine, used RV mounted acoustics and lowered probes to study Arctic and sub-Arctic pelagic fish, using both single frequency and broadband acoustics, and currently use moored echosounders to understand impacts of atmosphere-ocean processes on under-ice fauna.

As a biological oceanographer at ASL Environmental Sciences (www.aslenv.com), I help researchers design and implement studies using active acoustics, educate students and clients on the operation of instruments and analysis of acoustic data, and work on developing new tech and applications for underwater acoustics.

My research interests include pelagic and mesopelagic fish and zooplankton, high latitude coastal and fjord oceanography, sustainable fisheries, and more recently autonomous monitoring systems, including edge processing and real-time analytics.

I currently live in coastal British Columbia, Canada and am a ‘researcher-in residence’ at the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre (https://bamfieldmsc.com/).

For inquiries related to ASL’s Acoustic Zooplankton Fish Profiler (and new line of products), or otherwise, please get in touch at jchawarski @ aslenv.com, or send a DM.