| Summary: | Effective fisheries management requires an awareness of population demography and the spatial scale of population structuring, yet traditional approaches to quantifying both can be labour intensive and expensive. Here I explore the utility of large genomic datasets to characterize population structure, estimate effective population size, and monitor population status in Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) in Placentia Bay Newfoundland, Canada using a 220K SNP array. Population structure was linked to a temperature associated chromosomal polymorphism. Populations were small (N̂b < 350) and currently declining. Simulations suggested that large genomic datasets (≥ 100 microsatellites or ≥ 1000 SNPs) enabled accurate detection of population declines >30%. As such, I demonstrate that large genomic datasets allow the identification of fine-scale spatial structuring, the structuring forces involved, and provide a cost effective and accurate approach to monitor population status in the wild
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