Cages Study 1981-2014

Estuaries are important in supporting much of the fishery production in the Gulf of Mexico, but this support appears to vary widely among different estuarine systems. The main objective of this project was to assess variability among estuaries in supporting fishery species and other abundant nekton. The project is part of a larger effort of the National Marine Fisheries Service Galveston Laboratory to develop a Comparative Assessment of Gulf Estuarine Systems (CAGES). The nekton abundance data summarized in this report are available at http://data.gcoos.org. This cooperative study with state natural resources agencies was designed to use fishery independent monitoring data and compare historical catches from 4.9-m and 6.1-m trawl surveys. This report provides an assessment of the abundance, length frequencies, and biomass of 14 species of fish and four species of decapod crustaceans that were either abundant in the samples or economically important. The most abundant species in the analysis include bay anchovy, Atlantic croaker, spot, and brown shrimp. Other fishery species of particular interest include Gulf menhaden, white shrimp, pink shrimp, blue crab, spotted seatrout, southern flounder, and red drum. While the years analyzed varied among states, samples from most estuaries were available and analyzed for the years 1986 to 2005. The 24 estuaries analyzed were identified using the Estuarine and Coastal Drainage Areas delineated by the U. S.Geological Survey and listed in NOAA's Coastal Assessment Framework

The main objective of this project was to assess variability among estuaries in supporting fishery species and other abundant nekton. The project is part of a larger effort of the National Marine Fisheries Service Galveston Laboratory to develop a Comparative Assessment of Gulf Estuarine Systems (CAGES).

Location Of The Main Office Of The South East Fisheries Science Center

The data will be available from a public web server once an access methodology has been developed.

N/A

Each sample was assigned a unique identification code. Field collected samples were tagged redundantly (e.g. one label inside of the collection vessel and a matching label attached to the outside of the vessel). The identifier and its associated information (e.g. date, location, habitat) was recorded on field data sheets. Once a sample arrived at the laboratory, the label remained with the sample throughout the various stages of sample processing. After data were entered into an Excel spreadsheet or similar database file, the information was printed out and compared against the field data sheets by two biologists. Corrections were made at this time and saved. The electronic file was also sorted and examined by the Lab Supervisor or other project personnel in a variety of ways to look for outliers, missing data, and other potential errors.

This data is currently wavered under the current NOAA guidelines for relational databases.

The archival process is currently under development.

The data resides on a secure government network requiring multi-factor authentication for network access.