Tagging and migration of the American lobster Homarus americanus

European lobster Homarus gammarus in Norway has been in decline over the last 30 to 40 yr, and the species is currently red listed according to International Union for Conservation of Nature criteria. In 2006, experimental lobster reserves were established in the coastal Skagerrak, southern Norway, allowing for studies in the absence of disturbance by fishing gear. We present behavioural data from individual lobsters (n = 10) within 2 of the reserves. These data were obtained from data storage tags which logged in situ temperature and depth of specific individuals for up to 1 yr. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first direct measurements of depth obtained from freely behaving lobsters. Net movement exhibited by recaptured lobsters, measured as the distance between global positioning system positions recorded at the site of capture and recapture ranged from 15 to 580 m. Lobsters used habitats within a depth range of 1 to 57 m, and experienced sea temperatures ranging from 2°C during late winter (February to March) to 18°C during late summer (August to September). Lobster activity levels declined from September, reaching a minimum during February and March. From April, activity levels resumed. Seasonal variation in activity was correlated to water temperature (r 2 = 0.55). Lobsters were more active during nighttime than during daytime, and there was a tendency for lobsters to reside in more shallow water during nighttime versus daytime. The present study suggests that future reserves for European lobster should be designed to include deeper habitat (30 to 50 m) in areas where such habitat exists when the management objective is long-term protection.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Activity patterns of wild European lobster Homarus gammarus in coastal marine reserves: implications for future reserve design

Moland¹,

Olsen²,

Knutsen³

et al. 2011

“…In some cases, it has also influenced decisions about where and when fishing should occur for rock lobsters (Street 1971, McKoy 1983, Phillips 1983, Moore & MacFarlane 1984, Booth 1997, Noli & Grobler 1998, or for clawed lobsters (Cooper & Uzmann 1971, Haakonsen & Anoruo 1994. Queuing (Herrnkind 1969) and aggregation behavior (Koyama 1971, Kelly et al 1999) may make migrants particularly susceptible to fishing gear, which may in turn result in overfishing or localized depletion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-distance migration of South African deep-water rock lobster Palinurus gilchristi

Groeneveld¹,

Branch²

2002

Long-term movement patterns of deep-water rock lobster Palinurus gilchristi were investigated off the south coast of South Africa using tag recapture data. Over a 12 yr period (1988 to 1999), 30 043 lobsters were tagged at 5 sites. From west to east, these were Cape Agulhas, West and East Agulhas Bank, Mossel Bay to Port Elizabeth, and Port Alfred. The overall recapture rate was 7.51%, with individuals remaining at large for up to 10.3 yr. Overall, 547 (25.8%) tagged lobsters of both sexes moved > 20 km within or between sites. We hypothesized that counter-current migration of juveniles would occur to redress downstream dispersal of phyllosoma larvae by the westerly flowing Agulhas Current. The vast majority of migrants (72.6%) did prove to be immature (carapace length < 72 mm) and did migrate eastwards against the prevailing flow of the Agulhas Current. The Cape Agulhas population (at the western extreme) comprised juveniles only. Over 97% migrated > 50 km, either southeastwards offshore to the West and East Agulhas Bank sites (106 lobsters, covering a mean distance of 154 km), or eastwards alongshore to the Mossel Bay to Port Elizabeth site near the center of the range (33 lobsters, 461 km). The fastest 5% of migrants moved at 0.43 to 0.78 km d -1

“…Although extensive cyclical movement of Homarus americanus in response to storm conditions is common along the Atlantic coast, it involves limited (< 5 km) horizontal displacement (Haakonsen & Anoruo 1994, Lawton & Lavalli 1995. Intensive sampling in localized areas has documented evidence suggestive of resident and disperser movement behavior (Ennis 1984, Karnofsky et al 1989b), but individuals could not be followed over large spatial scales.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This result is contrary to previous work, which reported male-biased (Jury et al 1994) and female-biased (Campbell & Stasko 1986) movement in coastal Homarus americanus populations. Such bias has most frequently been attributed to selective pressures acting on reproduction strategies (Haakonsen & Anoruo 1994) or different physiological requirements between the sexes (Jury et al 1994). However, discrepancies may be a question of the scale of data collection, data biases in fisherydependent research, or sex-biased movement during a portion of the year.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a high probability that the study animals were captured and released within similar habitat. The group of study animals obtained was biased towards lobsters that were susceptible to traps, a bias common to most lobster tagging research (Haakonsen & Anoruo 1994, Watson et al 1999, Comeau & Savoie 2002. Although trap susceptibility is known to be related to dominance behavior and within-trap lobster density (Jury et al 2001), it is not known how either of these influence movement patterns, if at all.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Resident and dispersal behavior among individuals within a population of American lobster Homarus americanus

Bowlby¹,

Hanson²,

Hutchings³

2007

Various biases and limitations associated with mark-recapture research have resulted in conflicting interpretations of individual movement patterns, rendering unclear the selective pressures that could be responsible for structuring populations and influencing individual behavior patterns in the marine environment. To address these issues, novel modeling techniques developed for mammalian systems were applied to trajectory data from an American lobster Homarus americanus population in order to describe quantitatively seasonal movement patterns. Basing individual-and population-level analyses on a correlated random walk model, individuals were found to belong to 1 of 2 movement types: residents or dispersers. Over the course of a year, resident animals remained in the general area of their release, whereas dispersing animals moved rapidly away from release sites in autumn and slowly returned in spring. Such movement patterns can be explained as responses to seasonal limitations in hard-substrate habitat. The effect of movement on the seasonal population distribution and structure of lobsters can have significant consequences for the sustainable exploitation of the species.