Does a high coefficient of variation disqualify fish abundance
as a useful indicator of impacts? There is no universally accepted
threshold of variability that will preclude statistical detection of
change. Nonetheless, we point out that (Eckert, 2009) concluded
that human impacts on marine macrofauna (i.e. fish and macroinvertebrates)
in Alaska would likely go undetected because their
temporal abundancewashighly variable (meanCV = 89%). Most CVs
reported in our survey were greater than 89%, indicating the effect
of anthropogenic stress is similarly difficult to detect in intertidal
fishes of mangroves due to high spatial and/or temporal variability.