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The broad scope of the Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) mandate requires an efficient process for describing and mapping the habitat needs of federally managed species. For example, research indicates surficial sediments affect the distribution and abundance of many groundfish species, yet traditional sampling with grabs and cores is impractical over areas as large as the Bering Sea shelf. Acoustic tools are suitable for large-scale surveying and show great promise as a substitute for direct-sampling methods, but they have not been proven useful for EFH purposes.