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Fixed versus Random Sampling of Fishes in a Large Reservoir
Author(s) -
King Terry A.,
Williams J. C.,
Davies William D.,
Shelton William L.
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
transactions of the american fisheries society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.696
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1548-8659
pISSN - 0002-8487
DOI - 10.1577/1548-8659(1981)110<563:fvrsof>2.0.co;2
Subject(s) - electrofishing , statistics , sampling (signal processing) , mathematics , hectare , simple random sample , population , fish <actinopterygii> , sample size determination , point estimation , sampling design , biology , fishery , ecology , demography , computer science , filter (signal processing) , sociology , computer vision , agriculture
Electrofishing samples from 10,481‐hectare West Point Reservoir were used to estimate means and variances associated with (1) total weight of fishes in each sample, (2) percentage of total weight contributed by each of 15 species, and (3) percentage of weight of each species contributed by fish larger than a reference weight. These estimates were used to determine if there were any differences in sampling bias between fixed and randomly selected collection sites. There were relatively few statistically significant differences in either means or variances between the two types of sampling sites. We propose that sampling at fixed sites may provide acceptable values for developing statistically unbiased estimates of population parameters in cases where fixed‐site sampling is more economical or feasible than random sampling.