GUIDELINES FOR SAMPLING FISH IN INLAND WATERS

GUIDELINES FOR SAMPLING FISH IN INLAND WATERS


EIFAC Technical Paper No. 33	EIFAC/T33

edited by


Tadeusz Backiel	Robin L. Welcomme
Inland Fisheries Institute	Senior Fishery Resources Officer
05 500 Piaseczno	Fisheries Department, FAO
Poland	Rome, Italy

FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS
Rome 1980

The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

M-43

ISBN 92-5-100973-2

The copyright in this book is vested in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, by any method or process, without written permission from the copyright holder. Applications for such permission, with a statement of the purpose and extent of the reproduction desired, should be addressed to the Director, Publications Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy.

PREPARATION OF THIS DOCUMENT

The European Inland Fisheries Advisory Commission (EIFAC) is a regional commission of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The Commission organized a symposium on methodology for the survey, monitoring and appraisal of fishery resources in lakes and large rivers, which preceded its Eighth Session held from 6 to 10 May 1974. The Symposium¹ reviewed a wide variety of methods used in sampling fish in inland waters and it was considered that the information on these methods can form the basis for a manual on sampling methodology. Thus, the Eighth Session of EIFAC recommended that a manual be prepared and Dr. T. Backiel was appointed to coordinate the work.

After preliminary discussions an outline of the manual was prepared and circulated among about 20 experts in March-April 1975, but due to various circumstances a considerable time elapsed between the submission of the first contribution, which was received by the Coordinator in October 1976, and the last, requested rather late to fill a gap, which came in November 1978.

The content of all contributions differed from what was originally envisaged. Thus, the manual has been entitled “Guidelines” to indicate that the work is not so extensive in scope and not so thorough in its content as a manual should be.

At the Eighth Session of EIFAC in 1974, another recommendation was formulated which is closely related to that on the manual. It was suggested that due to current lack of information of gears relative to the population sampled or to other methods of sampling the same population, “… the member countries be invited to carry out test fishing for intercalibration of various gears”. The then Chairman of EIFAC, Prof. Dr. K. Tiews, took the initiative in organizing an intercalibration exercise, having taken advantage of the generous offer of the Finnish delegates to make three lakes available for such an international venture. After some discussions and planning and after considerable preparatory work done by the Finnish experts and with the help of German (R.F.) specialists the exercise was performed from 23 August to 4 September 1976. The analysis of the great amount of data collected therefrom was entrusted to Dr. T.B. Bagenal (U.K.). The results of this experiment have not been incorporated into these guidelines, but it is highly recommended that the reader of this work acquaint himself with these results.

Editors: T. Backiel
R. Welcomme

¹ Welcomme, R.L. (ed.), 1975 Symposium on the Methodology for the Survey, Monitoring and appraisal of Fishery Resources in Lakes and Large Rivers. EIFAC Tech. Pap., (23) Suppl. 1, 2 vols:747 p.

For bibliographic purposes this document should be cited as follows:

Backiel, T. and R.L. Welcomme (eds), Guidelines for sampling fish in inland waters. EIFAC 1980 Tech.Pap., (33):176 p.

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