Efficiency comparisons of fish sampling gears for a lentic ecosystem health assessments in Korea

Abstract

The key objective of this study was to analyze the sampling efficiency of various fish sampling gears for a lentic ecosystem health assessment. A fish survey for the lentic ecosystem health assessment model was sampled twice from 30 reservoirs during 2008–2012. During the study, fishes of 81 species comprising 53,792 individuals were sampled from 30 reservoirs. A comparison of sampling gears showed that casting nets were the best sampling gear with high species richness (69 species), whereas minnow traps were the worst gear with low richness (16 species). Fish sampling efficiency, based on the number of individual catch per unit effort, was best in fyke nets (28,028 individuals) and worst in minnow traps (352 individuals). When we compared trammel nets and kick nets versus fyke nets and casting nets, the former were useful in terms of the number of fish individuals but not in terms of the number of fish species.

Keywords

• fish sampling gear
• Korean reservoir
• lentic ecosystem health assessment
• sampling efficiency