Estimating Fish Abundance – Online – February 27th, 2024

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.