Swimming performance in juvenile shortnose sturgeon (Acipenser brevirostrum): the influence of time interval and velocity increments on critical swimming tests

Abstract

We measured the critical swimming speed of sturgeon using different velocity and time intervals, to evaluate the best indicator of the swimming performance. Overall, velocity increment had the greater impact on swimming performance, and researchers should consider both velocity and time intervals when measuring swimming performance of fish.

Assessing Acoustic Tagging Effects on Survival, Growth, and Swimming Ability of Juvenile Lake Sturgeon

“…; Miller et al. ; Downie and Kieffer ). Studies have also shown that a smaller sample size used during U crit testing can show significant results between treatment groups within sample sizes of n ≤ 15, suggesting sufficient power to detect any deleterious tag burden effects if they exist (Cunningham and McGeer ; Brown et al.…”

“…Speed was increased sequentially by 0.2 TLs/s every 20 min. Speed increases and acclimation periods chosen were based on prior literature describing juvenile sturgeon critical swim tests (Miller et al 2014;Downie and Kieffer 2017). When the fish was pinned to the downstream end for 5 s, the swim test was terminated.…”

“…Our study, however, was limited in the amount of time the fish were studied (114-d study period) and the use of a smaller sample size (n = 93; or n = 60 for swim test data, where no fish had died). It should be noted that using a small sample size (treatment group n ≤ 16) for U crit testing is common across various studies (Adams et al 2003;Miller et al 2014;Downie and Kieffer 2017). Studies have also shown that a smaller sample size used during U crit testing can show significant results between treatment groups within sample sizes of n ≤ 15, suggesting sufficient power to detect any deleterious tag burden effects if they exist (Cunningham and McGeer 2016;Brown et al 2017).…”

Drones, hydraulics, and climate change: Inferring barriers to steelhead spawning migrations

“…where V = swim speed of fish relative to the water; L = length of fish; t = time to exhaustion, and a, b, c are regression coefficients (Hunter & Mayor, 1986). We focused on three burst swimming paces (Downie & Kieffer, 2017;Lehman, Huff, Hayes, & Lindley, 2017), defined as the speed that a 90 cm adult steelhead could sustain for 20, 10, and 5 s. A 20-s barrier would thus represent a relatively long but only moderately swift patch of water, while a 5-s barrier would represent a very swift patch of water even if the length of this was very short; a 10-s barrier would be intermediate in length and velocity. For "B run" Clearwater steelhead, setting coefficients (from Hunter & Mayor, 1986) as a = 12.3, b = 0.62, and c = −0.51 yields burst speeds of 2.5 m/s (t = 20 s), 3.6 m/s (t = 10 s), and 5.1 m/s (t = 5 s).…”

Measuring Ucrit and endurance: equipment choice influences estimates of fish swimming performance

“…There are numerous arguments about which swimming performance measures are best and how they should be related to fish passage in the field (Haro et al, 2004;Peake, 2004;Burford et al, 2009;Bestgen et al, 2010). This issue is complicated by the fact that the protocols for testing swimming performance, such as U crit , vary in time and velocity increments which are known to alter estimates of critical swimming speeds (Hammer, 1995;Plaut, 2001;Downie & Kieffer, 2017).…”