| Summary: | The Shoreline Fish Community Visual Assessment (SFCVA) monitoring component, whish is underway as part of the REstoration, COordination and VERification (RECOVER) program of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). Specific objectives of the SFCVA monitoring component are: (1) to continue the seasonally-resolved, now 13.5- year visual fish monitoring effort that, for the most part, has focused on southern Biscayne Bay; (2) to expand this effort spatially to include sites in northern Biscayne Bay, Card Sound, and Barnes Sound; (3) to perform data analyses that evaluate variability in these fish communities before, during, and (ultimately) after CERP-realted changes to freshwater flow (and salinity) are implemented; and (4) to correlate changes in salinity regime with changes in the shoreline ichthyofauna. These objectives were met after performing power analyses to determine numbers of sample required to detect change, review of historicca; literature and existing datasets, collection of new data, and analyses of the "baseline conditions" of shoreline fish assemblages at both the community since the previous (seventh) annual report which analyzed data through the wet season of 2010. New data continue to be collected and will be incorperated into our database to gauge future impacts of CERP-related modifications to freshwater flow on shoreline fishes .
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