By use of life history information taken incidental to the population 

 surveys, the total population of winter flounder age 2 and older was 

 calculated (Table 9) . These estimates were slightly larger than those 

 for winter flounder greater than 15 cm because, except for 1977, a 

 small percentage of 2 year olds was smaller than 15 cm. 



Finally, estimates from the beginning of each annual survey through 

 the second week in April were calculated (Table 9) . This period is 

 considered the spawning period and estimates may be used with other life 

 history information to calculate the number of spawning females and 

 their total fecundity. This data may be used in various impact assessment 

 analyses. Since restrictions on stations sampled have been made in 

 recent years, estimates were also made using data from only stations 1, 

 2, 4, and 5 for comparative purposes. Due to annual changes in effort, 

 however, the contribution from stations 4 and 5 to these totals varied 

 considerably from year to year. 



Evaluation of the Jolly method of population estimation 

 Assumptions of method 



One of the major undertakings of this evaluation was to examine 

 whether the surveys met the assumptions of the Jolly method and that the 

 field data obtained and derived estimates are realistic. There is no 

 doubt that the stochastic method of Jolly (1965) is an extremely powerful 

 general formulation most appropriate for open populations (Begon 1979). 

 It is the only technique which used all the information provided by the 

 capture-recapture experiment and is also the most efficient estimate as 

 long as failures do not occur in the basic assumptions (Cormack 1968). 

 Although it may sometimes seriously overestimate the survival rate 



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