There is not a large volume of literature available on these habitats and the nekton they support. The study was designed to quantify nearshore habitat use by the economically important juvenile summer flounder. This included discovering when they were using the areas, how many of them were frequenting during the recruitment period, and what food source was attracting them to the habitats.
Summer flounder begin their life in a planktonic stage.
When they metamorphose into their more familiar form, they recruit to the bottom and many look to these shallow areas for protection and food. Once they leave the shallow waters, they swim out to deeper water, many times at the edges of drop offs. In the Chesapeake Bay, trawling has helped to quantify summer flounder numbers in water depths of 1.5 meters or greater. However, the shallow waters have not had quantitative surveys performed. Therefore, a gap was present in the data that needed some attention.