NRTG’s MicroCourses offer a dynamic training pathway that’s as flexible as it is enriching to build expertise. Our Estimating Fish Abundance MicroCourse, spanning four hours, delivers in-depth training in an easily digestible format. It’s designed to maximize your skills for immediate application.
The goal of many fish sampling programs is to estimate abundance of these animals within a waterway. Understanding how to, and appreciating the limitations of our estimation methods, is critical to any working professional conducting fish assessments. Insight into this topic allows not only the calculation of abundance, but also informs study design, selection of methods, budgeting for proposals, and conduct of the field work. Appreciating the required end result – fish abundance – is the key to tying all aspects of any fish sampling program together. Hence, this knowledge informs and underlies all other fish sampling considerations.
The NRTG micro-course Estimating Fish Abundance introduces the student to methods of estimating fish abundance and includes considerations of effect of gear type and survey design on final abundance estimates. This course is very light on statistics and is intended for an audience seeking an overview of abundance estimation methods and the influence of the field work aspect upon those estimates.
Course will be 4 hours long.
Instructor Profile
Dave Evans
Dave Evans is an Aquatic Specialist and Project Manager with over 25 years of experience in fisheries and aquatic resources as a technician, instructor, consultant and regulator. He has extensive experience conducting and overseeing fish habitat and inventory studies as well as environmental impact assessments in western Canada and has also completed aquatic studies in the US Pacific Northwest and northern Canada. He has provided project management, planning, and permitting expertise to numerous projects in transportation, infrastructure, oil and gas and government sectors, to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and industry best management practices while also providing practical, cost-effective solutions for clients. He is currently working on several watershed restoration plans focusing on species at risk in the east slopes of the Canadian Rocky Mountains including aquatic habitat restoration and monitoring, water quality improvement, fish relocation and spawning habitat enhancement.