A comparison of two electrofishing methods used to monitor fish on the Illinois River, Illinois

The Illinois River Biological Station monitors fish communities in the Illinois River using two different electrofishing programmes, one using three-phase alternating current [AC; The Long Term Illinois Fish Population Monitoring Program or long-term electrofishing (LTEF)] and the other pulsed direct current [DC; The Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP)]. In 2001, we replicated three-phase AC sampling sites with pulsed-DC electrofishing gear to test for differences between the two collection methods and programmes. Electrofishing runs at each site were standardized by length and time, with 48 samples collected for each gear. Our objective was to test for differences in fish catch rates using total catch, species richness, [...]