Management activities at St. Joseph Bay Aquatic Preserve have been discontinued as of July 1, 2011. This page describes one of the former ecosystem science programs which will be restarted should revenue streams improve.

The preserve had six monitoring stations in St. Joseph Bay to collect data on the abundance, size structure and habitat associations of fishes and selected invertebrates. Each site was monitored on a monthly basis and will identify essential habitat that species requiring protection use during critical life stages. A 70 foot seine net was used to collect species at each station which are counted and released (up to 20 individuals per species are measured).

The goal of the project was to describe the major trends in the spatial and temporal distribution of major fish and invertebrate species between habitats within the St. Joseph Bay system and relate the occurrence, abundance, and seasonality of fish and invertebrate species to natural environmental variations such as temperature and salinity regimes and periodic events such as storms (relationships to environmental factors). This project was also providing estimates of  relative abundance and monitored the size class distribution of economically important fish species in seagrass areas.

• Fish Monitoring Sites in St. Joseph Bay (PDF - 426 KB)

More information on the Fish Distribution and Abundance Monitoring Program at St. Joseph Bay Aquatic Preserve is available in the St. Joseph Bay Aquatic Preserve Management Plan.