Professor Trevor Avery teaches and conducts fisheries research out of Acadia University in Nova Scotia. More recently he’s teamed up with Jeff Wilson of the Striper Cup and Sean Simmons of Anglers Atlas to form a ground-breaking recreational fisheries research initiative called the Atlantic Anglers Challenge. The initiative rewards anglers to download and use the MyCatch app to track and report their angling pressure and success. Listen as professor Avery shares with Lawrence Gunther his rationale and expectations for the research that is now taking place across all four Atlantic provinces on this episode of Blue Fish Radio.
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Trevor Avery is an Associate Professor, Biology and Mathematics & Statistics, at Acadia University. The Atlantic Anglers Challenge is a multi-species, multi-season tournament and Covid-19 fundraiser. It uses MyCatch to record anglers catches including fish size, location, and time fishing. Anglers are introduced to Angler's Atlas, an online database for their fishing days, and the data is used by researchers to answer questions on fish biology and fisheries science. Fish biology questions might be where species are found, including discovery of invasive species, color patterns, and sizes. Fisheries science questions might include estimating relative catches based on effort fishing (known as catch-per-unit-effort) and size distribution. In all cases, a tournament designed partly with fish diversity in mind, such as all species and all sizes count, instead of just the largest or most fish provides much more data to researchers to investigate fish. Link below for more information about the research.