School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, 11794, USA.
Department of Biology, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey, 07764, USA.
Sci Rep. 2019 Aug 27;9(1):12432. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-48818-6.
Imminent development of offshore wind farms on the outer continental shelf of the United States has led to significant concerns for marine wildlife. The scarcity of empirical data regarding fish species that may utilize development sites, further compounded by the novelty of the technology and inherent difficulty of conducting offshore research, make identification and assessment of potential stressors to species of concern problematic. However, there is broad potential to mitigate putatively negative impacts to seasonal migrants during the exploration and construction phases. The goal of this study was to establish baseline information on endangered Atlantic Sturgeon in the New York Wind Energy Area (NY WEA), a future offshore development site. Passive acoustic transceivers equipped with acoustic release mechanisms were used to monitor the movements of tagged fish in the NY WEA from November 2016 through February 2018 and resulted in detections of 181 unique individuals throughout the site. Detections were highly seasonal and peaked from November through January. Conversely, fish were relatively uncommon or entirely absent during the summer months (July-September). Generalized additive models indicated that predictable transitions between coastal and offshore habitat were associated with long-term environmental cues and localized estuarine conditions, specifically the interaction between photoperiod and river temperature. These insights into the ecology of marine-resident Atlantic Sturgeon are crucial for both defining monitoring parameters and guiding threat assessments in offshore waters and represent an important initial step towards quantitatively evaluating Atlantic Sturgeon at a scale relevant to future development.
美国外大陆架即将开发海上风电场，这引发了人们对海洋野生动物的极大关注。由于可能利用开发场地的鱼类物种的经验数据稀缺，再加上技术的新颖性和进行海上研究的固有难度，因此确定和评估对关注物种的潜在压力因素存在问题。然而，在勘探和建设阶段，广泛存在减轻季节性洄游鱼类潜在负面影响的可能性。本研究的目的是在纽约海上风能区（NY WEA）建立濒危大西洋鲟的基线信息，该地区是未来的海上开发场地。装有声学释放机制的被动声学收发器用于监测 2016 年 11 月至 2018 年 2 月期间标记鱼类在 NY WEA 的运动情况，结果在整个场地检测到 181 个独特个体。检测结果具有明显的季节性，从 11 月到 1 月达到高峰。相反，鱼类在夏季（7 月至 9 月）相对较少或完全不存在。广义加性模型表明，沿海和近海生境之间可预测的转变与长期环境线索和局部河口条件有关，特别是光周期和河流水温的相互作用。这些关于海洋栖息的大西洋鲟的生态学见解对于定义沿海水域的监测参数和指导威胁评估至关重要，这是朝着在与未来开发相关的规模上定量评估大西洋鲟迈出的重要的第一步。
