BOATS & GEAR
SONAR
The Sonar Challenge
SEAPIX DRILLS DOWN About 10 years ago, iXblue set its sights on building a sonar that fishermen want By Paul Molyneaux
bout 10 years ago, iXblue — a French tech company headquartered on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea — identified fisheries as a potential market and began asking fishermen what they wanted in a sonar. “We found that fishermen want two things,” says Christophe Corbières, Fishery sales developer at iXblue. “They want to know the volume of the target shoal, and they want to be able to discriminate species.” To that end, iXblue designed the Seapix sonar system, a pricey but top of the line tool for fishermen who want to have a good idea what they’re setting their nets on. The system begins with a Mills Cross transducer with 256 beams on each axis.
Christophe Corbières photos
Seapix can display the boat, the bottom and the targeted catch in real time, providing skippers with much of the information they need to make quick decisions.
46 National Fisherman \ Spring 2022
A full bag aboard the Alaska Victory. Seapix helps skippers know what’s going to be in the net before they set it.
Bay Welding photo
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“It looks ahead and the side 120 degrees,” says Corbières. “We are using the same transducer geometry that astronomers use to listen to deep space, adapted for the sea.” iXblue made the transducer 48 centimeters in diameter, so it could
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