The Inland Bays Shorezone Fish & Blue Crab Survey, initiated in 2011, is one of three long-term volunteer/scientist collaborations.

The annual survey is an effort to better understand the shorezone fish community in the Bays. The shorezone fish community responds to changes in water temperature,  water quality (especially dissolved oxygen), and shoreline conditions. These nearshore fish species are of economic and ecological importance,  as they are the young of commercial/recreational fish, or the food source that supports them and shorebirds.

The goals of the survey program are to help determine long-term species trends, temporal variations, and environmental changes, along with an understanding of community composition and the importance of nearshore habitats within the Inland Bays.

Surveys are led by trained volunteer site leaders who are assisted by trained volunteers at fixed locations. The teams use 30-foot seine nets to capture fish which are identified, counted, measured, and returned unharmed to the Bays. With more than 100 species of fish known to use the Bays (48 collected in 2018!), teams never know what they will find. Seine samples are collected at each of the 16 sites bi-monthly from May through October, plus one sample in late April, for a total of 208 sampling events annually.

These data are expected to be particularly useful as management organizations examine the switch from traditional single-species stock assessments to Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management. The data have been used by NOAA to assess potential impacts on fisheries from proposed in-water construction.