Examining and Improving the Efficacy of PIT Tag Arrays in Estimating Population Sizes of Salmonids

Passive integrative transponders (PIT tags) have become common tools in the study and management of fish populations by academic groups, government agencies and proponents of environmental projects. PIT tags, the size of a grain of rice, are injected into fish and provide a unique and lasting individual identifier that can be sensed throughout the lifetime of a fish. PIT tagging is thus a key tool to estimate fish populations; this understanding underpins fisheries management and decision-making in both natural and regulated rivers. A major challenge for PIT telemetry users however, is the quantity of data generated, which can lead to time consuming data management and limit analyses. In addition, it is difficult to predict the performance of a PIT telemetry site, which can influence site location, tagging effort and data variance. This project aims to: 1) optimize data analytics for PIT technology using existing PIT telemetry datasets to increase the efficacy, consistency and accuracy of these services. 2) Address uncertainty in fish population data by modelling relationships between data variance and the physical characteristics of stream channels, and developing novel methods to account for this variance. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Jonathan Moore

Student:

Partner:

InStream Fisheries Research Inc

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program: