Amber Hanick, UR- Seining, Identifying, and Calculating!

Site 2-Ponce Inlet

Site 1-Mangrove Cove

Class on 2/17 was full of new experience, excitement, and marked the first day out in the field thus far. The Friday before, Chad Macfie from the Marine Science Center visited us in the DSC Lab and briefed us on fish seining and identification using dichotomous keys. Upon arrival at the Marine Science Center in Ponce Inlet the next Friday, Chad immediately gathered the class and we began to venture off towards the Mangrove Cove and Ponce Inlet. The first site, the Mangrove Cove, is a small partially enclosed cove with mangroves partially surrounding the area. Before we began to seine, we first took into account and observed our surrounding environmental parameters like salinity, pH, and dissolved oxygen. Environmental conditions at the site were sunny, a fair wind, with a water temperature of 19.6 degrees Celsius. We also noted that the low tide that morning was at 7:10 a.m. so at our time of research the tide was flooding. The movement of the seine net consisted of a rectangle as we brought the net away from the shoreline and then transferred into a quarter circle as we brought the net full of collected specimens back towards the shoreline. For the Mangrove Cove site, the width of the seine net was

Site 1 Catch

22.22 meters, while the length of the net was 12.46 meters. We began our seine at 9:50 a.m. and ended at 9:57 a.m. with an elapsed time of effort of 7.06 minutes. This site was a rather low energy site, however, after we pulled in the seine we ended up with 7 different species including Atlantic Croaker, Mullet, Mojarro, Atlantic Silverside, Striped Killifish, Mummi Chug, and Sharptail Goby. Our total catch was 1,419 with the most common species being the Atlantic Croaker with a total of 1,085 individuals caught. Site 2 was the Ponce Inlet location where there was a high energy environment, a water temperature of 20.3 degrees Celsius, and many sources of error. As we arrived to the site we noticed a hole in the seine net, fishermen, passing boats, and strong currents making this site a difficult pull area. Our width of the net pull was 16.42 meters and our length was 15.2 meters. The current definitely made this pull rough with almost every member of the class pitching in effort to manage the shoreline side of the net as Chad and Lyle pulled the net offshore. As they were just rounding the turn and pulling the seine in a boat raced by creating large wake which rattled our net and most likely allowed for specimens to escape under and over the net area. This pull only netted 21 mullet which was disappointing to say the least, on the bright side, it showed us just what environmental conditions and human interaction with an area can do and how every source of error may not be within your control. I learned a lot from this experience and it definitely opened my eyes to how challenging this field of study can get. I chose to do my graph on the Atlantic Croaker catch over the dates of study at the Mangrove Cove. I chose a line graph to represent the data due to the data being shown over time. As shown it can be concluded from the graph that the beginning of

the year is the best time to collect Atlantic Croaker due to their abundance on seine dates 4/10/2015 with a catch of 1,563 and on 2/17/2017 with a catch of 1,085. The first day in the field makes me crave more and I can't wait to experience the rest of field studying in this class!