Juvenile Sport Fish Trawl Monitoring in Florida Bay

Juvenile spotted seatrout and other sportfish are being monitored annually over a 6-mo period in Florida Bay to assess their abundance over time relative to restoration of a more natural pattern of freshwater flow from the Florida Everglades through implementation of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). This monitoring and assessment project will provide a scientific basis for the selection of spatial and temporal abundance indices, performance measures, and targets to determine the effect of CERP on Florida Bay resources. Monitoring annually during the period of greatest abundance, May through October, will provide data to determine whether there is a significant relationship of sport fish distribution and abundance to salinity and other environmental variables. Habitat suitability models will be developed from the data and will be used to predict distribution and abundance under different scenarios of freshwater inflow, past and future.