estimation in general, with particular reference to Lake Kyoga in Uganda. S.M. Muchiri and P. Hickley discuss the fisheries of Lake Naivasha in Kenya. These papers provide an interesting view of lakes in a period of considerable change and one comes away with the feeling that given a modest level of resources it is quite feasible to estimate total catch. It is much less clear whether sampling of the catch can provide suitable data to perform useful stock assessments.
M. Cryer and G.D. Maclean from New Zealand look in detail at the distribution of individual anglers' catches and the importance of angler skill in determining individual variation in catch. This type of work is crucial to determine the sample sizes needed in creel surveys.
As the title suggests, most of the papers in this volume deal in some way with catch and effort statistics, with numerous papers discussing the problems of collecting the data, other papers considering the trends in specific fisheries and yet others using the catch and effort statistics to interpret the trends in abundance. The final paper, by I.G. Cowx summarizes the theme of the conference: that in most freshwater fisheries, catch and effort sampling is about the only tool available for stock assessment, and Cowx provides good guidelines on how best to conduct such sampling. Implicit in his discussion (and indeed in many of the papers) is the assumption that fishery-independent data are too expensive to collect in small-scale fisheries. Given the recognized problems in using commercial or recreational CPUE in making management decisions, it would have been valuable to see some consideration of methods for collecting fishery-independent data.
In summary, this is a nicely produced volume that contains many papers that should be of interest to everyone involved in fisheries management or research. The topics are applicable to tropical and temperate, as well as recreational and commercial, fisheries.