2018 article
A non-invasive approach to enumerating White Sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus Richardson, 1863) using side-scan sonar
Hughes, J. B., Bentz, B., & Hightower, J. E. (2018, April). JOURNAL OF APPLIED ICHTHYOLOGY, Vol. 34, pp. 398–404.
Mark-recapture (M/R) surveys are a standard approach for monitoring White Sturgeon (WS) Acipenser transmontanus populations; however, they can be resource-intensive, may affect fish health, and often lack enough precision to detect population change reliably. Hydroacoustics surveys provide a non-intrusive method that is well-established in fisheries research, but have been applied relatively seldom to sturgeon populations. During 2016, an alternative method was tested for estimating WS abundance by using side-scan sonar within a 58-km reach in the middle Snake River, Idaho, USA, and comparing the results to a standard M/R estimate. Using replicate count data within a N-Mixture model, the sonar method estimated a lower abundance with higher precision (153, 101–213 95% Bayesian credible interval) than that of M/R (219, 138–398 95% confidence interval). Relative to M/R, side-scan sonar took 75% fewer sample-days, exhibited overlapping abundance estimates, and provided similar sturgeon length distributions. These results suggest that side-scan sonar can provide a rapid and precise alternative to M/R for estimating sturgeon abundance.