Hydroacoustic Assessment of the Abundance and Distribution of Rainbow Smelt in Lake Oahe
- 1 January 1987
- journal article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in North American Journal of Fisheries Management
- Vol. 7 (1) , 106-116
- https://doi.org/10.1577/1548-8659(1987)7<106:haotaa>2.0.co;2
Abstract
Hydroacoustic surveys with dual-beam processing and echo integration techniques were conducted on Lake Oahe, South Dakota, in the summers of 1983-1985 to assess the abundance and distribution of rainbow smelt (Osmerus mordax). Rainbow smelt are the primary coldwater forage fish for the developing salmonid fishery in this large Missouri River impoundment. Numerical estimates of pelagic fishes were 98,180,000 ± 5,550,000 (95% confidence limits), 95,430,000 ± 28,600,000, and 106,697,000 ± 21,880,000 for 1983, 1984, and 1985, respectively. Over 98% of the fish collected by midwater trawling and gillnetting during the surveys were rainbow smelt, suggesting that most of the fish sampled acoustically were also rainbow smelt. Biomass estimates for sampled portions of Lake Oahe were 157,100 kg (2.8 kg/hectare), 477,100 kg (8.5 kg/hectare), and 202,700 kg (3.6 kg/hectare) for 1983, 1984, and 1985, respectively. The accuracy of these biomass estimates is unknown because of the indirect method of calculating...This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: