Estimation of lake whitefish spawning stock abundance using close-kin mark-recapture

Grant: # 2009

Grant Amount: $238,242.40

Board Decision Year: 2023

University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point - College of Natural Resources (Stevens Point)

College of Natural Resources

Homola, Jared ([email protected]) 517-214-7039

2023 Ecosystem Health and Sustainable Fish Populations: Ecological and Biological Research to Inform Management - Ecological and biological fisheries research to inform management

Project Summary

Lake Michigan stock assessments for lake whitefish suggest an adult abundance peak in the mid-2000’s, with estimates pointing to a steep decline in recent years due to decreased recruitment. We propose to explore this trend and validate current assessment models for a representative stock over the 2000-2018 period using close-kin mark-recapture, a fishery-independent method of estimating adult dynamics using observed kinship frequencies from archived tissue samples.