Welcome to Survey Explorer

Survey Explorer is a feature-rich, custom tool for leveraging fish community data derived from electofishing surveys of Connecticut streams and lakes. The data utilized by this site is extracted in real-time from resources made available online by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and maintained by the University of Connecticut, and is further supplemented by custom transformations.

The contents of this site includes:

• waterbody surveys
• survey sites
• BCG assessments
• unique waterbodies in municipalities

Improved Data

Survey Explorer is heavily based upon the rich dataset provided state, but for as powerful as that dataset may be, it isn't perfect. Before that original dataset is passed into the pages you'll use on this site, it's dramatically improved by a series of advanced custom transformations that make it signficantly more useful and accurate.

Better Distinctions Between Waterbodies

The state's source data makes no distinctions between waterbodies that happen to share a name. So for example, the source dataset essentially contains one "Mad River" with sampling locations in Waterbury, Winchester and Wolcott. In reality though, that represents two different rivers of that name: one in New Haven County and one in Litchfield County. This happens frequently throughout the dataset, too. 'Beaver Brook' actually represents six different streams of that name, and there are four different streams named 'Fox Brook' that are lumped together as one. Survey Explorer splits apart waterbodies that share names to ensure they are represented separately, making it easier to quickly tell them apart and affording the opportunity to provide much more accurate statistics for each. The source data presents only unique waterbodies, while Survey Explorer's improved dataset recognizes .