to the Niantic River and vicinity for spawning or whether a portion 

 enters other estuaries for spawning. Tagging at the trawl monitoring 

 program stations completed during the spring and early summer of 1982 

 and planned for the fall and winter of 1982-83 should help identify the 

 source and movements of winter flounder at the trawl monitoring stations, 

 particularly the offshore ones where preliminary data indicated that 

 many winter flounder are transients and not from the Niantic River 

 stock. In addition, the returns from the sport and commericial fisheries 

 should allow the calculation of fishing mortality. This estimate may be 

 used to partition the total mortality estimate previously mentioned into 

 components of fishing and natural mortality. These estimates are 

 necessary for many models used to assess power plant impact. 



Conclusions and Recommendations 

 1. The life history information such as age structure, fecundity, and 

 mortality gathered as part of the winter flounder population estimate 

 program and during special studies have been invaluable in the assessment 

 of Millstone power plant impact. The original deterministic model 

 assessing impact data mostly used data reported in the scientific literature 

 from studies of other winter flounder stocks. As data were gathered and 

 refined at Millstone, the parameters estimated replaced those which were 

 less suitable. The program for the future should focus on those parameters 

 considered most critical for use in various models used to assess impact. 

 Increased emphasis should be placed on improving techniques and efficiency 

 in obtaining data. 



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