Course Learning Outcomes:

1. Assess the status of fish populations based on information commonly collected by fisheries biologists (e.g. fork length, round weight, condition factor, stomach contents, age based on hard structures) so that we can determine the health of populations and take action to conserve them, or manage them more effectively if needed.
2. Demonstrate practical skills involved in working with fisheries data including data entry, organization and analysis to understand the health of individuals and the population, to understand demographics (e.g. age of population), their required habitat, and other biologically relevant factors so we can conserve or manage fisheries more effectively.
3. Demonstrate practical skills required to use different fish capture equipment including gill nets, trap nets, minnow traps and seine nets and apply these to sample fish communities.
4. Describe the basic principles of modern technology used in fisheries such as hydroacoustics and biotelemetry, the benefits and limitations of these approaches and demonstrate basic skills required to use this technology to sample fisheries.
5. Describe the most common fish species in Ontario and their basic life history in order to identify them and understand how different factors might influence their populations, so they can be properly managed and conserved.
6. Design sampling programs based on varying assessment techniques appropriate for different fisheries to be able to effectively monitor population levels.