Akins John L, Morris James A, Green Stephanie J
Reef Environmental Education Foundation 98300 Overseas Hwy, Key Largo, Florida, 33037.
NOAA National Ocean Service, National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research 101 Pivers Island Rd., Beaufort, North Carolina, 28516.
Ecol Evol. 2014 Oct;4(19):3768-77. doi: 10.1002/ece3.1171. Epub 2014 Sep 10.
Information on fish movement and growth is primarily obtained through the marking and tracking of individuals with external tags, which are usually affixed to anesthetized individuals at the surface. However, the quantity and quality of data obtained by this method is often limited by small sample sizes owing to the time associated with the tagging process, high rates of tagging-related mortality, and displacement of tagged individuals from the initial capture location. To address these issues, we describe a technique for applying external streamer and dart tags in situ, which uses SCUBA divers to capture and tag individual fish on the sea floor without the use of anesthetic. We demonstrate this method for Indo-Pacific lionfish (Pterois volitans/P. miles), species which are particularly vulnerable to barotrauma when transported to and handled at the surface. To test our method, we tagged 161 individuals inhabiting 26 coral reef locations in the Bahamas over a period of 3 years. Our method resulted in no instances of barotrauma, reduced handling and recovery time, and minimal post-tagging release displacement compared with conventional ex situ tag application. Opportunistic resighting and recapture of tagged individuals reveals that lionfish exhibit highly variable site fidelity, movement patterns, and growth rates on invaded coral reef habitats. In total, 24% of lionfish were resighted between 29 and 188 days after tagging. Of these, 90% were located at the site of capture, while the remaining individuals were resighted between 200 m and 1.1 km from initial site of capture over 29 days later. In situ growth rates ranged between 0.1 and 0.6 mm/day. While individuals tagged with streamer tags posted slower growth rates with increasing size, as expected, there was no relationship between growth rate and fish size for individuals marked with dart tags, potentially because of large effects of tag presence on the activities of small bodied lionfish (i.e., <150 mm), where the tag was up to 7.6% of the lionfish's mass. Our study offers a novel in situ tagging technique that can be used to provide critical information on fish site fidelity, movement patterns, and growth in cases where ex situ tagging is not feasible.
有关鱼类运动和生长的信息主要通过使用外部标签标记和跟踪个体来获取，这些标签通常贴在水面麻醉的个体身上。然而，由于标记过程所需时间、标记相关的高死亡率以及标记个体从初始捕获地点的位移，通过这种方法获得的数据的数量和质量往往受到小样本量的限制。为了解决这些问题，我们描述了一种在原位应用外部飘带和镖式标签的技术，该技术使用水肺潜水员在海底捕获并标记个体鱼类，无需使用麻醉剂。我们针对印度 - 太平洋狮子鱼（褐拟鲈/密斑拟鲈）演示了这种方法，该物种在被运到水面并进行处理时特别容易受到气压伤。为了测试我们的方法，我们在3年时间里标记了居住在巴哈马26个珊瑚礁地点的161条个体。与传统的异地标记应用相比，我们的方法没有导致气压伤的情况，减少了处理和恢复时间，并且标记后释放的位移最小。对标记个体的机会性重新观察和重新捕获表明，狮子鱼在入侵的珊瑚礁栖息地表现出高度可变的地点保真度、运动模式和生长速度。总共，24%的狮子鱼在标记后29至188天被重新观察到。其中，90%位于捕获地点，其余个体在29天后在距离初始捕获地点200米至1.1公里处被重新观察到。原位生长速度在每天0.1至0.6毫米之间。正如预期的那样，随着体型增大，贴有飘带标签的个体生长速度较慢，而对于贴有镖式标签的个体，生长速度与鱼的大小之间没有关系，这可能是因为标签的存在对小体型狮子鱼（即<150毫米）的活动有很大影响，标签重量可达狮子鱼体重的7.6%。我们的研究提供了一种新颖的原位标记技术，可用于在异地标记不可行的情况下提供有关鱼类地点保真度、运动模式和生长的关键信息。
