Subject	Oceanography
Specific subject area	Environmental impact assessment and appraisal for tidal energy
Type of data	Fish aggregation metrics derived from volume backscattering (Sv) measurements. Current speed and direction measurements.
How data were acquired	Data were acquired with a mooring deployment housing a 38–67–125–200 kHz Acoustic Zooplankton and Fish Profiler (AZFP) from ASL Environmental Sciences and a Signature 500 AD2CP from Nortek.
Data format	Raw Pre-processed Post-processed
Parameters for data collection	The mooring deployment site was selected based on favourable traits for tidal energy turbine development including current speed (up to 2.2 m/s), depth (∼29 m), substrate (sand-gravel), even sea-bottom, and proximity to an existing power grid on shore. Deployment duration was selected to sample several tidal cycles.
Description of data collection	A bottom-mounted mooring was refitted to house a four-frequency biological echosounder (38–67–125–200 kHz) and an ADCP (500 kHz). Instruments were programmed for concurrent data collection with the biological echosounder sampling at 0.25 Hz and the ADCP at 1 Hz over ∼2.5 months.
Data source location	Tidal energy candidate site in the Banks Strait, located between Clark Island and Tasmania, Australia. Deployment depth: 29 m at high tide. GPS location: 40°41′17.3″S; 148°07′21.9″E
Data accessibility	Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN), University of Tasmania, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS). Available under: https://metadata.imas.utas.edu.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/metadata.show?uuid=5d8d465d-a7a8–4d45-a08b-d89c942244bb (Metadata) https://data.imas.utas.edu.au/attachments/5d8d465d-a7a8–4d45-a08b-d89c942244bb/Scherelis_AZFP_ACDP_Dataset/ (Download page)
Related research article	C. Scherelis, I. Penesis, M.A. Hemer, R. Cossu, J.T. Wright, D. Guihen, Investigating biophysical linkages at tidal energy candidate sites: a case study for combining environmental assessment and resource characterisation, Renewable Energy 159, 2020, 399-413.