Population Estimates

Abstract

Little is known about the abundance of northern snakehead in the Potomac River system. The objective of this work was to provide estimates of population abundance of northern snakehead in Dogue Creek bay, a tributary of the Potomac River in northern Virginia. Dogue Creek bay is a shallow tidally influenced embayment with an area of approximately 2.3 km². We collected data by boat electrofishing and radio telemetry from April to August, 2007. These data were analyzed using established mark-recapture methods to provide estimates of abundance. We estimated that northern snakehead abundance ranged from 288 to1759, 560 to 3231, and 797 to 1019 for joint hypergeometic likelihood estimator (JHE), immigration/emigration adjusted JHE and the Minta-Mangel estimator, respectively. Abundance estimates that we provided can be used to determine the efficacy of control efforts and to provide a baseline for evaluating the success of management.