Our Staff

Scott W. Milne
Owner and Lead Scientist
B.Sc. Trent University
M.Sc. University of Toronto

Scott Milne is the lead scientist and owner of Milne Technologies. He has over 25 years of experience with hydroacoustic technology and within the field of freshwater ecology. He is specialized in providing acoustic data collection, processing and analysis services to the private sector, government agencies, academic institutions, and nongovernmental organizations. Scott has many years experience designing and implementing mobile and stationary split-beam echosounder and imaging sonar surveys (i.e. Kongsberg - Mesotech M3 MBES, ARIS & DIDSON) for assessing fish behaviour and relative fish abundance around power-plant fish diversion systems (e.g., Pickering Nuclear Generating Station FDS, Eastman Chemical), cooling-water intake forebays (e.g. Darlington and Bruce Nuclear Generating Stations, Lennox TGS, etc.), large lakes (Lake Winnipeg, Great Lakes, Wabush Lake, Lake Simcoe, etc.) and water control/shipping canals (e.g., Welland Canal Lock system, Trent-Severn). From these and other long-term sonar deployment projects (e.g., Michipicoten DIDSON Fish Passage Assessment, USGS Crane Creek Wetland Reclamation Project, etc.), Scott has also developed software applications to automate sonar data processing for efficiently reducing large acoustic data sets down to a user-friendly database structure for further statistical analyses. He also has experience developing wireless and remotely operated sonar array systems for autonomous data collection in high-risk environments from surface vehicles and fixed sonar installations.

Scott has been involved with several international groups and committees including the Great Lakes Fishery Commission’s (GLFC) hydroacoustic and fisheries management technical committees including the “Study Group on Fisheries Acoustics on the Great Lakes”, a working group tasked with the development of standard operating procedures for hydroacoustic surveying of fish populations in the Great Lakes. Scott also led the hydroacoustic component of the GLFC’s “Emerging Technologies in Fisheries Science”, a workshop designed to introduce new fisheries technology to biologists, managers, and industry representatives from across the U.S. and Canada.

Scott‘s graduate thesis at the University of Toronto was on the foraging and spatial ecology of schooling fish and focused on the integration of hydroacoustic technology with traditional fish sampling techniques. In addition to working for academic institutions and resource consulting companies, Scott has many years of experience as a fisheries and stock assessment biologist for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. He has presented his work at professional meetings and conferences including the ICES Acoustic Working Group, Canadian Conference for Fisheries Research, annual meetings of the American Fisheries Society, and at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway.

Select Publications

Challice, A.R., S.W. Milne and M.S. Ridgway. 2019. Does habitat occupancy by lake trout and lake whitefish in large lakes match published thermal habitat envelopes? Ecology of Freshwater Fish. Link.

Cott, P.A., M.M. Guzzo, A.J. Chapelsky, S.W. Milne, and P.J. Blanchfield. 2015. Diel bank migration of Burbot (Lota lota). Hydrobiologia 757(1):3-20.

de Kerckhove D.T., S. Milne, B.J. Shuter and P.A. Abrams. 2015. Ideal gas model adequately describes movement and school formation in a pelagic freshwater fish. Behavioural Ecology 26(4):1236-1247

de Kerckhove D.T., S. Milne, and B.J. Shuter. 2015. Measuring fish school swimming speeds with two acoustic beams and determining the angle of the school detection. Fisheries Research 172:432-439

de Kerckhove D.T., B.J. Shuter, and S. Milne. 2016. Acoustically derived fish size-spectra within a lake and the statistical power to detect environmental change. Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 73(4):565-574.

DFO (Canada Department of Fisheries and Oceans). 2015. Fish Exclusion Options for Aquatic Species at Risk for Drainage Activities in Little Bear Creek, Ontario. Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat Science Response 2015/036. Link.

Dunlop E.S., S.W. Milne, M.S. Ridgway, J. Condiotty, and I. Higginbottom. 2009. In Situ Swimming Behavior of Lake Trout Observed Using Integrated Multibeam Acoustics and Biotelemetry. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 139:420–432.

Dunlop E.S., S.W. Milne and M.S. Ridgway. 2009. Temporal trends in the numbers and characteristics of Lake Huron fish schools between 2000 and 2004. Journal of the International Association for Great Lakes Research 36 (2010) 74–85.

Eggleston, M.R., S.W. Milne, M. Ramsay and K.P. Kowalski. 2020. Improved Fish Counting Method Accurately Quantifies High‐Density Fish Movement in Dual‐Frequency Identification Sonar Data Files from a Coastal Wetland Environment. North American Journal of Fisheries Management. 40(4):883-892 Link.

Midwood, J.D., Leisti, K.E., Milne, S.W., Doka, S.E., 2018. Spatial Assessment of Pelagic Fish in the Toronto and Region Area of Concern in September 2016. Can. Tech. Rep. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 3286: viii + 54 p. Link.

Midwood, J.D., Leisti, K.E., Milne, S.W., Doka, S.E. 2019. Assessing seasonal changes in pelagic fish density and biomass using hydroacoustics in Hamilton Harbour, Lake Ontario in 2016. Can. Tech. Rep. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 3299: x + 63 pp. Link.

Milne, S.W. 2015. 2015 Little Bear Creek multibeam bathymetry survey : field notes and data processing methodology. Prepared for Great Lakes Laboratory for Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, DFO. Link.

Milne, S.W., B.J. Shuter and W.G. Sprules. 2005. The schooling and foraging ecology of lake herring (Coregonus artedi) in Lake Opeongo, Ontario, Canada. Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 62: 1210-1218.

J.A. Wilson, C.P. Gubala, S.W. Milne, J. Condiotty, P. Addison and W.G. Sprules. 2002. Real time, in situ verification of target strengths of individual lake trout using integrated multi- and split-beam hydroacoustics with biotelemetry. Communications from the ICES Symposium on Acoustics in Fisheries and Aquatic Ecology, Montpellier, France.

L.C. Mohr and S. Milne. 2001. The status of Lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) in Canadian waters of Lake Huron. Abstracts from the 44th Conference on Great Lakes Research, June 10-14, 2001. Great Lakes Science: Making it Relevant. p95.

Patrick, P.H., E. Chen, J. Powell, S. Milne and J. S. Poulton. 2014. Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station Fish Diversion System Barrier Net. North American Journal of Fish Management. 34:2, 287-300. Link.

Petreman, I.C., N.E. Jones and S.W. Milne. Observer Bias and Subsampling Efficiencies of Fish Passage Estimations using Dual-Frequency Identification Sonar (DIDSON). Fisheries Research. 155:160–167

SENES Consultants. 2014. Supporting Document 3 Aquatic Assessment for the Napanee Generating Station. Prepared for TransCanada.

Shuter, B.J., S.W. Milne, L.E. Hrenchuk, D.T. deKerckhove, and M.D. Rennie. 2023. Integrating hydroacoustic and telemetric surveys to estimate fish abundance: a new approach to an old problem. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. 80(10): 1562-1578. Link.