Christian Vinciquerra UR, Lots of Energy from the Class and the Jetty

Mangrove Cove- Low Energy Zone

      Greeting, Friday the 17th was a great first day in the field besides the fact if was a little chilly, however, the day turned out to be beautiful. We met up with Chad from the previous week and headed to the first seining site. Mangrove Cove, is what our class is calling it, was a great low energy zone with a mangrove and beach shoreline. Chad led the whole class and jumped right into it with no hesitation. He briefed us quickly on what to anticipate. We unrolled the net and started measuring out the distances.  While we measured, Dr. Woodall and another student took measurements of the water parameters such as temp, salinity, pH, and dissolved oxygen.

Ponce Inlet-High Energy Zone

       Chad wore a wetsuit and walked the net into the water 73' while a student held the shoreline end. Together they walked 41' along the shore, stopped and began to do a quarter turn back onto the beach.  The overall elapsed time from start of the seine to finish was 7.06 minutes. Chad, in a blind of an eye pointed out a few species with code names and we began counting all together while some people tallied. Seven species and a total of 1,384 fish were caught. After counting, we used the dichotomous keys to identify the species of fish from their characteristics. We released all the fish then moved to site two which was a high energy zone on the jetty with no cover and all open shoreline. This time it was hard to hold the net and keeping the weights on the ground. Waves were crashing on the net, pushing and pulling it back an forth might have skewed our data there. Chad was 54' into the water and walked 50' along the shore before the turn, for a total elapsed time of 3.42 minutes. Only catching 21 of one species was a bummer, however, it really shows how species of fish really don't care for high energy zones compared to low energy zones.
      After all the data collection was completed, we added it to the data taken from the same locations

Graph of Mojorra caught in same location
over recent years.

from recent years. After looking over the data I noticed only one species of fish was caught every time this course seined at Mangrove Cove. Mojorra six out of six times here. As you can see from 2013 to April 2015 there was very few caught of ten or less. From October 2015 to February 2017 there has been over 65 caught each time. According is the graph, the population here had a massive increase. Unfortunately this isn't the case. All the times seined here were different, with different parameters and tides. If all the conditions were the same then we can possibly take an accurate estimate of the this species population in the area.
     I really enjoyed this field lab and gained some knowledge from it. I learned that a Mummichug uses its pelvic fins to basically walk on the ocean shore and the eyes are placed on the top of its head just like a Flounder to see the prey above. I also learned how to calculate Shannon Weiner Index as well as calculate the CPUE and CPUA. I also found there is a lot that may go wrong and give errors in your data collection. I believe it's best to not fight the errors rather than embrace them.