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3 . 1 . 2 Fish Population Censusing Fish population censuses will also be collected annually for three years post-construction in project and control areas and will also include at least one pre-construction census . The point-count method (Bohnsack and Bannerot 1986) will be used for fish assessment. This method has the advantage of gathering quantitative data in a relatively short time in a very repeatable pattern that is relatively insensitive to differences in habitat structure. Each census will have duration of 5 minutes and a radius (the distance from the stationary observer) of 10 feet. Four point counts will be collected in the vicinity of the photoquadrat stations at R- 8 , R42, and R- 16 . A complete fish census will thus consist of 36 five-minute counts in the project area and 24 in the control area. All counts may be lumped together to compare fish populations overall between the project and control areas, or data may be separated by position along the transects (inner, middle, and outer) to determine the offshore extent (if any) of project effects . Data from these types of censuses are rarely normally distributed, so the Wilcoxon Rank-Sum or a similar nonparametric test will be used for significance testing. 3 .2 Marine Turtle Foraging Habitat Monitoring The effects of beach restoration projects on marine turtle foraging habitat have never before been addressed, although foraging turtles and their habitat are widely distributed in the nearshore environment. This section of the proposed Plan will directly address the effects of the proposed project in Sectors 1 and 2 on , the abundance of juvenile green turtles in the nearshore foraging habitat. It is further proposed to initiate directed research to determine the distribution and abundance of foraging turtles throughout the nearshore environment of the County. 3 . 2 . 1 Netting Studies To directly assess the potential effects of beach restoration activities on turtles in nearshore reef foraging habitats, the applicant will utilize the data that has been collected by turtle researchers at the University of Central Florida (UCF) . UCF researchers have been conducting netting for over a decade in the nearshore directly offshore from the proposed Sector 1 and 2 project area. The extensive Catch Per Unit Effort (CPUE) data they have collected since 1989 can serve as a baseline from which project effects can be assessed. The UCF effort, despite the valuable data collected, has never had dedicated funding. Indian River County proposes to fully fund the nearshore reef netting effort in the summer following construction and in two subsequent summers and to provide funding for data analysis and report preparation on the effects of the project on foraging turtle CPUE . 13