User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
My project includes fish capture data (for Cultus Pygmy Sculpin; CPS) and corresponding dissolved oxygen levels. The most challenging part of creating the graph was organizing the data into an appropriate format. I am analysing the data using Tableau Public (a free data visualization tool) which is very effective once the data is formatted. I made a regression plot comparing CPS occurrence and dissolved oxygen concentrations. I removed the data points for minnow traps that did not yield any CPS captures, as they made the results confusing and I wanted to focus to be on where CPS are occurring as opposed to where they are not occurring. CPS is a species at risk, so inherently it is not observed in many locations. The results were surprisingly clear. Only 1 of the 169 captures occurred in dissolved oxygen levels of less than 7 mg/L, suggesting that CPS may have an aerobic threshold of around this level. I find this a little surprising. I know that salmon (in general) have an aerobic threshold of around 5 mg/L. I expected CPS to be similar. Notably, this is not a huge dataset and further investigation is required before determining the aerobic threshold of CPS. This was, however, a great start.
