In the spirit of Florida’s recent
AFS symposium on long term monitoring, I would like to reflect on my personal experiences
with freshwater fish community monitoring. Electrofishing is a common method
employed to assess fish communities and is used extensively by state and
federal officials. Data from electrofishing transects are compared to
historical results, which were (hopefully) obtained in the same manner.
However, electrofishing can be a fickle beast, producing different results
based on a myriad of factors. Operator error is one of the most common sources
of variability in results. Inexperienced researchers, even when trained, often
lack the field knowledge needed to respond appropriately to different
environmental variables. For instance, depth and conductivity change the
efficacy of electrofishing. On the flip side, inexperienced dippers (those who
net the fish at the front of the boat) can miss fish more often than those
seasoned biologists with a trained eye.A good example is the case of high macrophyte coverage trapping fish unseen and/or reducing the effective output.
