Data sheet development. A data sheet was devel- 

 oped for each species in each estuary to facilitate the 

 review and presentation of the information. Data com- 

 piled for each species/life stage included: 1 ) the salinity 

 zone it occupies (seawater, mixing, tidal fresh), 2) its 

 monthly distribution in those zones, and 3) its relative 

 abundance in those zones. Figure 4 depicts the data 

 sheet for rainbow smelt (O. mordax) in Great Bay, NH7 

 ME. Project staff developed these data sheets by 

 conducting exhaustive literature searches, and exam- 

 ining published and unpublished data sets. To comple- 

 ment the information from these quantitative studies, 

 regional and local biologists were asked for their knowl- 

 edge of estuary/species-specific spatial and temporal 

 distribution patterns and relative abundance levels 

 based upon their experience and research. The final 

 level of relative abundance assigned to a species was 

 determined from the available data and expert review. 



The abundance of a species was assessed relative to 

 that of the same life stage of other species with similar 

 behaviors (e.g., pelagic, demersal), gear susceptibili- 

 ties, and/or habitats. Based upon these similarities, it 



was possible to derive several "guilds" from the North 

 Atlantic ELMR species list and meaningfully assess 

 the relative abundance of species within each guild 

 (Table 2). For example, bluefish were compared to 

 other pelagic species and blue mussels were com- 

 pared to other bivalves but they were not compared to 

 each other. To rank relative abundances, ELMR staff 

 used the following categories: 



• Not present — species or life history stage not found, 

 questionable data as to identification of species, and/ 

 or recent loss of habitat or environmental degradation 

 suggests absence. 



• No information available — no existing data available, 

 and after expert review it was determined that not even 

 an educated guess would be appropriate. This cat- 

 egory was also infrequently used if the limited data 

 available were extremely conflicting and/or contradic- 

 tory (e.g., white hake spawning); in these cases, no 

 information available actually describes a situation 

 where the available information was indecipherable. 



Figure 4. Example of a species/estuary data sheet: Rainbow smelt in Great Bay. 



Osmerus mordax 

 Rainbow Smelt 



Great Bay 



New Hampshire/ Maine 



Legend: Relative Abundance: 



= Not Present 



= Rare 



= Common 



= Abundant 



= Highly Abundant 



Data Reliability (R): 



1 = Highly Certain 



2 = Moderately Certain 



3 = Reasonable Inference 



