Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Florida
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Florida Project


Lessons from a long-term fisheries monitoring program: The Florida experience

July 2021 - June 2026


Personnel

Participating Agencies

  • FWC, USGS
  • FWC

Fisheries managers need consistent, reliable information on fish populations across space and time to make informed management decisions. However, developing and sustaining long-term monitoring programs is inherently challenging for fisheries management agencies amid limitations in time, money, and personnel. This dichotomy—the value of fisheries monitoring on the one hand, the difficulty of monitoring on the other—makes it critical for fisheries agencies to formally evaluate their monitoring programs to maximize data reliability and program efficiency. In 2006, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) implemented a long-term monitoring (LTM) program to track trends in freshwater fish population distribution and community structure in numerous water bodies throughout Florida. Although the LTM program is designed to document changes in fish communities and thereby inform fisheries management amid anthropogenic stressors (e.g., land-use change, non-native species), the LTM program has yet to be comprehensively evaluated. The purpose of this project is to thoroughly evaluate the LTM program—including ecological insights, sampling design and statistical rigor, fisheries management implications, and program delivery—in collaboration with the FWC.

Research Publications Publication Date
Carlson, A. K., and M. V. Hoyer. 2022. Redear Sunfish occurrence, abundance, growth, and size structure as related to abiotic and biotic factors in Florida lakes. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 42:775–786. https://doi.org/10.1002/nafm.10764 March 2022
Presentations Presentation Date
Carlson, A. K. and M. V. Hoyer. 2022. Shellcracker occurrence, abundance, growth, and size structure as related to abiotic and biotic factors in Florida lakes. Florida Chapter of the American Fisheries Society annual meeting, Haines City, Florida, 5–7 April 2022. April 2022
Bonvechio, K. I. and A. K. Carlson. 2022. Lessons from a long-term fisheries monitoring program: Florida’s freshwater experience. Florida Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit Coordinating Committee Meeting, Gainesville, Florida, 9 May 2022. May 2022
Bonvechio, K. I. and A. K. Carlson. 2022. Lessons from a long-term fisheries monitoring program: Florida’s freshwater experience. Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences Graduate Student Symposium, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, 15 March 2022. March 2022