R is a software environment for statistical analyses and graphics that has several characteristics that make it attractive for fisheries science work,

• R is free, open source, and runs on UNIX, Windows, and Macintosh platforms,
• R has excellent and extensive graphing capabilities,
• The programming language in R is very powerful, flexible, and has many built-in statistical functions,
• The programming language can be extended with user-written functions,
• The programming language is continuously being developed and made available by a large group of international researchers,
• The next step to programming other languages will be made easier by experience with the object-oriented R programming language, and
• R commands are typed rather than selected from menus which allows "scripts" of analytical techniques to be developed and shared.

Because of these advantages the R environment is rapidly gaining popularity, both generally and within the fisheries science field. However, because R is a language that must be learned many users may not adopt R as an analytical engine.

This web-site has been developed to provided examples of fisheries-related analyses that can be performed in R. It is my hope that these examples will inspire or motivate you to "take up" use of R or, if you are already an R user, provide examples on which you can build your R knowledge. I initially populated the web-site with examples that I have written based on handouts from my Fisheries Science and Management class at Northland College. However, it is my hope that others will contribute examples or scripts to this page so that it can become a collaboration that provides a wider illustration of the ability of R to help with fisheries work.

The examples can be found under the "General Examples", "Book Examples", or "Journal Examples" tabs at the top of this page. The "Book" and "Journal" examples are analyses that are directly related to material in specific books or journal articles. The "General" do not relate to any specific source but rather illustrate a general analysis (e.g., Von Bertalanffy growth model). A brief description of fisheries-releated packages can be found under the "Packages" tab. Finally, the "News" tab contains a blog where I will announce modifications to the fishR web-site and the "Submit" tab explains how you can include your examples or scripts on this site.