Freshwater fish survey and assemblage report software
Freshwater fish surveys combine methods — backpack or boat electrofishing, fyke nets, bait traps — at fixed sites along a waterway. Each site produces a catch of species, lengths and counts, plus the water quality readings and habitat notes that explain them. The assemblage report compares native and alien species between sites and over time, and every number in it comes from per-fish length records that are tedious to summarise by hand.
Built for fisheries scientists running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample Fish assemblage report
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
Fish assemblage report
Table 4 — Catch by site, autumn sampling
- Waterway
- Fictional River, upper catchment
- Sampling
- Backpack electrofishing, 6 sites, 150 m reach each
- Date
- 17–19 April 2026
| Site | Catch (native / alien) | Note |
|---|---|---|
| FR1 — upstream of weir | 42 / 3 | Note: Pass |
| FR2 — weir pool | 11 / 38 (mostly eastern gambusia) | Note: Alien dominated |
| FR3 — riffle downstream | 57 / 2; juvenile Murray cod recorded | Note: Recruitment |
| FR4 — road crossing | Not sampled; conductivity above operating range | Note: Not sampled |
Fields captured on site
Your firm builds the form in-app, so these are a starting point rather than a fixed schema. Every field is captured on the device, with or without signal, and lands in the fish assemblage report where your template puts it.
Per site visit
- Site (linked)
- Method and settings
- Reach length and shocking seconds
- Water temperature, conductivity, turbidity
- Habitat notes and photos
Per fish
- Species
- Length (mm)
- Released or retained
- Condition or disease noted
Site totals
- Count by species
- Native and alien totals
- Catch per unit effort
Standards the report works to
- Commonwealth survey guidelinesSurvey guidelines for Australia’s threatened fish
- Cited for sampling effort and method choice where a listed fish could be present.
- Fisheries Management Act 1994 (NSW)Fisheries Management Act 1994
- In NSW, the permit framework under which research sampling of fish is carried out.
- NHMRC Code (8th ed., 2013)Australian code for the care and use of animals for scientific purposes
- The basis of the animal ethics approval covering capture and handling.
Load the standards you hold into your reference library and the drafted prose is written against them rather than against a general model.
How the fish assemblage report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the fish survey form in-app — 25 field types, nesting repeatable groups, compound AND/OR visibility rules, reusable modules and calculated fields. Field capture works with no signal: jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio all queue in an idempotent outbox that only clears once the server confirms receipt.
Link it to your sites, transects and plots
Enter sites, transects and plots once, as a register. Every one of your species observations and survey events then points at a stored row rather than a name somebody typed — and the links survive a disconnected device.
Render your own template
The fish assemblage report renders into the Word template you already use — your letterhead, your section order, your clause library — with conditionals, loops over repeats, composable sub-templates and photo grids.
Reviewed before it leaves
You write the review framework: a checklist of what a fish assemblage report must contain, plus the prose standards you would mark a junior against. Link it to a report template and it runs every time that template renders. Each finding comes back graded info, minor or major, quoting the sentence at fault, and a person accepts or dismisses every one.
Because the structured submission behind the report is held too, the review is a comparison rather than a proofread: The report concludes no threatened species were recorded; the survey event on Transect 3 carries an observation that says otherwise.
Checks a ecology framework usually carries
- Survey effort described meets the guideline for the species being assessed
- Every species in the results table is carried through to the discussion
- Weather, season and access limitations are recorded, not left implied
- Each approval or offset condition is addressed explicitly
Questions
- Can we enter a length for every fish without slowing down on the bank?
- Each fish is a short repeat row, and voice capture lets the operator call lengths while the form proposes values to accept or reject.
- Can catch per unit effort be calculated per site?
- Yes. A calculated field divides the site’s catch by the shocking seconds or net-hours recorded for that visit.
- Can a site that could not be sampled still appear in the report?
- Yes. A visit can be recorded as not sampled with a reason, so the table shows it rather than silently dropping it.
What this is not
Worth knowing before you book a demo, so neither of us wastes the half hour.
- Not field-service dispatch. No timesheets, no parts, no inventory. Scheduling exists to get an inspector to a site.
- No signature capture. If your deliverable has to carry a signed sign-off on the artefact itself, this is not the tool yet.
- Field capture is what works offline — jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio. Reports, chat, scheduling and the inbox need a connection.
- No client portal. Reports go out as a file or a password-protected link.
Other ecology work we cover
- Coral reef surveysReef health report
- Fauna spotter catcher logsSpotter catcher shift report
- Fauna surveysFauna assessment report
- Flora surveysVegetation assessment report
- Frog surveysFrog census report
- Habitat tree assessmentsHabitat tree register
- Koala habitat assessmentsKoala habitat report
- Marine mammal observationsMMO shift report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your fish assemblage report in SurveyThanks
Bring the Word template you already send clients. If you are coming off another field-forms tool, a filled report can be uploaded, read field by field, and re-rendered into your template.