WL 230: WILDLIFE AND FISHERIES TECHNIQUES

SPRING 2008

EXAM #2 STUDY GUIDE

I. Sampling

A. Passive v. Active Gears

        1) Advantages of passive and active gears?

        2) Examples of passive (entanglement and entrapment) and active gears and            under which conditions they are most appropriately used (e.g., Would you use a drifting trammel net in a lake?  Could you use fyke nets for lake sturgeon?).

B. Electrofishing

        1) Safety considerations (What can you do to keep everyone safe?).

        2) What is the importance of water quality (or specific measurements) in         electrofishing?

        3) Electrofishing in low v. high conductivity waters (Modifications?).

        4) What is power transfer?  How does it affect efficiency of electrofishing?

C. Toxicants

        1) Considerations when designing a rotenone project (e.g., concentration,      neutralization, public perception, etc.).

D. What factors can affect gear selectivity?

II. Age, Growth and Mortality

A. What are the basic approaches to aging fish?

B. What is the official hatch-day of fish in the Northern Hemisphere according to the American Fisheries Society?

C. How does growth rate affect annuli?

D. What factors can affect our estimation of fish ages?

E. How do you choose an anatomical structure for aging (e.g., climate, mortality, back-calculation considerations, etc.)?

F. Know the three pairs of otoliths.

G. Know how to interpret mean length at age information.

H. Know how to interpret age structure (i.e., graphical) information.

III. Marking and Tagging

A. How do a mark and a tag differ?

B. Examples of marks and tags.

C. How is biotelemetry useful?

D. Radio transmitters v. ultrasonic transmitters (How do they differ?  How do you choose which transmitter to use?)

IV. Indices

A. What are the most important (and cheapest) bits of information that can be      collected in any general fish survey?

B. How do you calculate and interpret CPUE, PSD and Wr?

C. What factors can affect CPUE?

V. Standardized sampling design

A. Be familiar with what factors you should consider when selecting a gear and date of sampling (e.g., species, mortality issues, behaviors, etc.). 

THIS WILL BE YOUR 10-POINT QUESTION ON THE EXAM!

Exam Format:

1) 34 multiple choice or true/false questions (2 points each).

2) 8 short-short answer questions (2-4 points each, depending on the question).

3) 1 long-short answer question (10 points)

4) 2 extra credit questions will be offered (5 points total)

KNOW YOUR LECTURE MATERIAL!  IF YOU MISSED ANY LECTURES, MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND THE MATERIAL!  CHECK WITH YOUR CLASSMATES OR MAKE AN APPOINTMENT WITH ME ASAP.