Fine-scale spatial acoustic telemetry, including hyperbolic and centre-of-activity localisation, is widely used to provide insight into the ecology of aquatic animals. However, these positional telemetry systems require numerous receivers, even for limited study areas such as narrow rivers, creeks, and canals, where tagged animals are typically monitored by receivers deployed at locations of particular interest or across a water body (acoustic gate). This paper proposes an acoustic zone monitoring method, which only uses a few acoustic receivers to estimate a zone used by a tagged fish in narrow water bodies. The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified by performing stationary and moving tests and by monitoring the movements of an invasive species in Japan, the channel catfish Ictalurus punctatus. Eight acoustic receivers were deployed 100–270 m apart along the river, with each zone having a length of 100–190 m. The proposed method provided accurate estimates in the inner and outermost zones of the eight stationary transmitters (100%, number of estimates: 1118 ± 419) and of a single transmitter towed by a boat (99.1%, number of estimates: 111/112). By contrast, centre-of-activity localisation estimated positions around the centre of the receiver array, and hyperbolic localisation was unable to provide positions because of an almost-straight-line array of receivers. The proposed zone monitoring method provided more accurate movement estimates of the tagged catfish. The method can cover an extended area using a limited number of receivers at a fine scale and be applied to initially identify the predominant habitats and distribution used by target species in the new study sites.

精细空间声学遥测，包括双曲线和活动中心定位，被广泛用于深入了解水生动物的生态。然而，这些位置遥测系统需要大量接收器，即使对于有限的研究区域，如狭窄的河流、小溪和运河，通常由部署在特别感兴趣的位置或跨水体（声学门）的接收器来监测标记的动物。本文提出了一种声学区域监测方法，该方法仅使用几个声学接收器来估计狭窄水体中标记鱼使用的区域。通过进行静止和移动测试以及通过监测日本入侵物种的运动来验证所提出方法的有效性，鲶鱼Ictalurus punctatus. 八个声接收器沿河流相距 100-270 m 部署，每个区域的长度为 100-190 m。所提出的方法在八个固定发射器（100%，估计数量：1118 ± 419）和被船拖曳的单个发射器（99.1%，估计数量：111/112）的内部和最外部区域提供了准确的估计. 相比之下，活动中心定位估计接收器阵列中心周围的位置，而双曲线定位无法提供位置，因为接收器几乎是直线阵列。建议的区域监测方法提供了更准确的标记鲶鱼的运动估计。