Single-beam acoustic ground discrimination of shallow water habitats: 50 kHz or 200 kHz frequency survey?

The single-beam acoustic ground discrimination system QTC View, Series V, was used in the Bay of Cadiz, Southwest Spain, for the identification and mapping of the bottom acoustic diversity. The acoustic data were obtained through two successive surveys, each conducted with one of the following echo sounder frequencies: 50 kHz and 200 kHz. The performance of each survey frequency for the identification of the sedimentary gradients was analyzed. The surveys were conducted during high tide given that the majority of the surveyed area is shallower than 5 m, although depth may occasionally reach 20 m in specific areas located in a navigation channel. The acoustic data obtained at the two different frequencies were, individually, submitted to manual clustering and a final solution consisting of three acoustic classes was reached for both datasets. However, only the geographical distribution of the acoustic classes obtained with 50 kHz echo sounder frequency was coincident with the spatial distribution of the superficial sediment groups (silty medium sand, very silty fine sand and mud), identified through multivariate analysis of the grain-size data of ground-truth sediment samples. The results obtained with the 200 kHz echo sounder frequency did not match the sedimentary gradients obtained for the area surveyed, not even the separation of muddy and sandy areas.