The First Ten Years: A Review of Florida's Freshwater Fisheries Long Term Monitoring Program

The Freshwater Fisheries Long Term Monitoring (LTM) Program of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission began in 2006 to determine trends in the fish community, sportfish population, and sport fisheries of important water bodies in Florida. The LTM program started with a focus on lentic systems, but has since expanded to include lotic systems, and currently has 38 core water bodies that are sampled annually. As part of this program, a standard sampling manual (now in its 6^th version) was created to provide a reference for proper sampling design, techniques, and analysis procedures and ensure routine samples are collected in a statistically sound manner. Protocols provided in the manual are considered minimum recommendations for sampling the core water bodies; however, the adoption of these protocols for other monitoring, management, or research activities is encouraged. All LTM data are stored and can be accessed via a centralized database. Currently, this database contains more than 31,000 sample sites from 188 water bodies, with over 2.25 million individual fish records from 210 fish species. Expanding on the LTM program to include lake-wide habitat data, a preliminary protocol is being established for mapping submersed aquatic vegetation coverage and density using hydroacoustic sensing.