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Effectiveness of single-pass backpack electrofishing to estimate juvenile coho salmon abundance in Alaskan headwater streams

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  • Fisheries
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Abstract

The use of techniques with low or inconsistent sampling efficiency may lead to erroneous estimates of abundance. Although an increase in sampling intensity can improve sampling efficiency and precision, its cost can limit a study’s spatial extent. A low-effort approach may be preferred for landscape-scale studies of fish distribution and abundance; however, this requires information on whether the low-effort sampling is vulnerable to habitat-mediated bias and imprecision of the estimator. To determine how habitat features affected sampling efficiency of juvenile coho salmon Oncorhynchus kisutch in headwater streams of the Little Susitna drainage, Alaska, we validated single-pass backpack electrofishing methods with closed population mark–recapture sampling. We found that habitat features, such as stream size and density of wood debris, had no measurable or consistent effect on sampling efficiency within the range of conditions present in these headwater systems, and single-pass catch explained 94.8 % of the observed variation in log-transformed mark–recapture estimates. This suggests that low-effort methods in headwater streams of the Little Susitna River can approximate actual fish numbers without accounting for habitat covariates that may influence sampling efficiency, and the advantage of sampling a greater spatial extent may sufficiently offset any concerns over low estimator precision.

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Acknowledgments

This project received Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) approval under IRBNet ID 157737-5. We thank Phillip Taylor, Casey Smith, Parke Loyd, Danielle McClain, Sydney Clark, Sarah Laske, Jonathon Gerken, and Doug McBride for assistance with field data collection. We also thank the many landowners throughout the study region who granted access across their property to our study sites, most notably Scott and Linda Schwald. We also thank Justin Carney and Nicholas Smith for their assistance in data analyses. We thank Sarah Laske and Trevor Haynes for their assistance and helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript. Funding for this work was provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Anchorage Field Office. Use of trade names does not imply endorsement of any product or service by the U.S. Government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, P. O. Box 757220, Fairbanks, AK, 99775, USA

    Kevin Foley, Amanda Rosenberger & Franz Mueter

  2. U.S. Geological Survey, Missouri Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    Amanda Rosenberger

  3. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Anchorage Fish and Wildlife Field Office, 4700 BLM Rd, Anchorage, AK, 99507, USA

    Kevin Foley

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  1. Kevin Foley
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  2. Amanda Rosenberger
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  3. Franz Mueter
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Correspondence to Kevin Foley.

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Foley, K., Rosenberger, A. & Mueter, F. Effectiveness of single-pass backpack electrofishing to estimate juvenile coho salmon abundance in Alaskan headwater streams. Fish Sci 81, 601–610 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12562-015-0888-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12562-015-0888-1

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