Habitat associations and dispersal of black sea bass from a mid-Atlantic Bight reef

Abstract

We examined habitat associations of 122 adult black sea bass Centropristis striata at a temperate reef off the coast of New Jersey, USA. The study site, located within the Historic Area Remediation Site, encompassed 46.1 km 2 and included areas of rocky bottom and highly variable bathymetry. Factors influencing dispersal and habitat use were determined from acoustic telemetry data collected between May and December 2003 from a grid of 72 moored receivers. About 2.7 times as many black sea bass used the site in summer as in fall. Fish were associated with relatively shallow, complex habitats characterized by previously placed, coarse-grain material that may have provided food, shelter, or both. Deep areas (> 27.5 m) with coarse-grain material were rarely used. Dispersal of black sea bass was not a pulse event, but rather a steady movement of individuals away from the site as inshore bottom water temperatures declined between late September and mid-December. Both temperature and photoperiod may serve as cues to the initiation of offshore movements of fish to wintering grounds near the edge of the shelf. Some black sea bass resided at the reef for periods of up to 6 mo encompassing the spawning period; as such, these habitats may be important to the continued production of the stock. In the mid-Atlantic Bight, surveys to estimate the relative abundance of this species during their inshore residency period should be conducted in July-August in structurally complex habitats and in waters < 28 m deep.

Home range and seasonal movements of Black Sea Bass (Centropristis striata) during their inshore residency at a reef in the mid-Atlantic Bight

“…1, A and B). In April 2003, adjacent receivers were placed 800 m apart because a range test conducted earlier at this site indicated that the effective detection range of deployed receivers was about 400 m (Fabrizio et al, 2013). Sediments at this site ranged from fi negrain mud to coarse-grain material, such as sand, gravel, and rocks (Lathrop et al, 2006); rock outcrops were observed near the center of this site (Butman 5 ).…”

“…Historically, this area comprised a number of "dump sites" used to dispose of dredged materials from the Port of New York and New Jersey, as well as of construction material and other refuse. In 1997, the 53.8-km 2 area that surrounds the old dump sites was designated a Historic Area Remediation Site (HARS (Fabrizio et al, 2013), and this population supports recreational fi sheries in New York and New Jersey.…”

“…We used the bivariate normal distribution to estimate kernel home ranges with the adehabitat package in R (R Development Core Team, 2005;Calenge, 2006). For each fi sh, we eliminated observations from the release date to exclude data from the period during which fi sh may have been recovering from surgery and excluded data from the last week of occupancy at the site to ensure that we considered only those fi sh that were clearly not in the process of dispersing from the study site (Fabrizio et al, 2013); as a result, 109 fi sh were retained for analysis of home range.…”

“…Along the Atlantic coast, individual fi sh undertake annual migrations to the middle-and outer-continental shelf during winter (Musick and Mercer, 1977;Moser and Shepherd, 2009); in the spring, Black Sea Bass migrate inshore, often returning to areas occupied in the previous year (Moser and Shepherd, 2009). Timing of these seasonal cross-shelf migrations varies with latitude, but fi sh movements are believed to be in response to changes in water temperature at the bottom of the seafl oor and in photoperiod (Moser and Shepherd, 2009;Fabrizio et al, 2013). Black Sea Bass are protogynous hermaphrodites, and larger fi sh (>450 mm total length [TL]) tend to be predominantly male (NEFSC 2 ).…”

“…Between spring and fall, populations of this species are exploited by recreational hookand-line fi sheries, as well as by commercial pot fi sheries (Shepherd and Terceiro, 1994). The Black Sea Bass is a demersal species in the family Serranidae, and individuals are commonly found to associate with hardbottom structures, such as reefs, rock outcroppings, and wrecks (Steimle and Zetlin, 2000;Fabrizio et al, 2013). Along the Atlantic coast, individual fi sh undertake annual migrations to the middle-and outer-continental shelf during winter (Musick and Mercer, 1977;Moser and Shepherd, 2009); in the spring, Black Sea Bass migrate inshore, often returning to areas occupied in the previous year (Moser and Shepherd, 2009).…”