Round Goby Creek Surveys

§         Gear – 25' beach seine with bag in center of net., ¼" mesh size.

§         Locations – In 2004, we're targeting Lake Erie tributaries in New York including Big Sister Creek, Chautauqua Creek, and 18-Mile Creek.  On Lake Ontario, we are planning to sample 4-Mile Creek, Yanty Creek, and Keg Creek.

§         Sample Dates – May, July, and September.

§         Procedure – Beginning at the mouth of each stream where it meets the lake, seine hauls of approximately 20-60 meters are performed every 100 meters as the stream is ascended.  When gobies are no longer collected we stop. (In some cases such as early spring, we will continue the seining anyway because of very low goby densities, and/or excellent net avoidance skills. – In many cases we see gobies, but they escape our catch efforts.)

§         Fish data collected – Length, species.  Goby are saved and frozen for gut analysis.

§         Other data collected – water temperature, DO, air temperature, conductivity, depth recorded at 3 locations across the stream at transect site, flow is measured (10 readings averaged – meters/second), percent substrate is visually estimated for gravel, cobble, silt, sand, man-made, detritus, boulder, or bedrock across transect, GPS point recorded with Trimble GPS in center of transect, stream width and transect length recorded using laser range finder - (fish/m² will be estimated based on seine width x transect length).