Navigating challenges in spatio-temporal modelling of Antarctic krill abundance: Addressing zero-inflated data and misaligned covariates

Antarctic krill ( Euphausia superba ) are among the most abundant species on our planet and serve as a vital food source for many marine predators in the Southern Ocean. In this paper, we utilise statistical spatio-temporal methods to combine data from various sources and resolutions, aiming to model krill abundance. Our focus lies in fitting the model to a dataset comprising acoustic measurements of krill biomass. To achieve this, we integrate climate covariates obtained from satellite imagery and from drifting surface buoys (also known as drifters). Additionally, we use sparsely collected krill biomass data obtained from net fishing efforts (KRILLBASE) for validation. However, integrating these multiple heterogeneous data sources presents significant modelling challenges, including spatio-temporal misalignment and inflated zeros in the observed data. To address these challenges, we fit a Hurdle-Gamma model to jointly describe the occurrence of zeros and the krill biomass for the non-zero observations, while also accounting for misaligned and heterogeneous data sources, including drifters. Therefore, our work presents a comprehensive framework for analysing and predicting krill abundance in the Southern Ocean, leveraging information from various sources and formats. This is crucial due to the impact of krill fishing, as understanding their distribution is essential for informed management decisions and fishing regulations aimed at protecting the species.