A controlled experimental assessment of intraperitoneal PIT tag injection on survival of Blueback Herring

Abstract

Passive integrated transponder (PIT) telemetry is commonly used to monitor fish movements and behavior. To reduce inferential bias in PIT telemetry studies, it is important to quantify the effects of tagging procedures on fish survival. To this end, we conducted a controlled experiment to test the hypothesis that intraperitoneal injection of 23 mm PIT tags would have no effect on the survival of adult Blueback Herring Alosa aestivalis. We compared mortality rates of tagged and untagged Blueback Herring (n = 174; size range 202‐277 cm) that were retained in experimental tanks for 14‐days and observed no difference in the probability of survival between tagged (50% survival) and untagged (42%) groups. These results suggest that intraperitoneal tag injection is a safe and effective method of PIT tagging adult Blueback Herring and supports the use of this technique in field telemetry studies.