I believe the number is fish per hour. Fish netted during the netting periods/time of nets soaking. You can’t just multiply by 24 to get total number of fish though since tides etc have too much influence and on fish presence.
It means little no matter how it is calculated, like you say too many variables and most aren’t accounted for. The key is that they do the testing the same each time which it sounds like they try to do(similar tides, length of soak, location etc).
In short bottom line netting numbers are only of value for comparison reasons not trying to calculate exact number of fish no matter how accurate you try to make the data.
That said fisheries probably has some formula that they use to estimate total numbers of fish. Without the data and understanding it is impossible to know what that formula might be though.
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