Data management and archiving

Documenting and archiving calibration data and supporting information is critical.  In addition to data and derived values acquired from the calibration software, echosounder data should be recorded and archived immediately after conclusion of the calibration.  Supporting information should be documented and archived with the calibration data.

A single calibration analysis worksheet should be created to archive the results of each calibration done with a given transducer (Fig. 16).  An analysis file allows the operator to compare the current calibration with past values and provides a means to assess system flux/stability over time.