Fresh for 2021, Furuno has rolled out a new, higher-resolution split-beam sounder, the FCV38.

Matt Wood, Furuno’s national sales manager, said the FCV38 is representative of Furuno’s product line in that it borrows from the past  — using the same transducer array and many of the same sensors as its predecessors — but combines it with more powerful signal processing, which provides for a finer-grain presentation of schools.

“Being able to do fish school analysis and fish size analysis is kind of the holy grail of commercial fishing. Multibeam and split-beam sounders have always been at the leading edge of being able to see both the size of the school and the size of fish within that school,” Wood said.

Wood added that several upgrades have made the FCV38 more user-friendly than its immediate predecessor, the FCV30. These upgrades include shifting the most meaningful data to be more prominently displayed on the screen as well as a new control mechanism that mimics a conventional PC mouse.