Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Swimming abilities of juvenile estuarine fishes: implications for passage at water control structures

Swimming abilities of juvenile estuarine fishes: implications for passage at water control... The capability of early life history stage fishes to access nursery habitat within managed salt marshes is dependent on their ability to negotiate water control structures (WCSs). Knowledge of swimming ability and hydrodynamic preferences is essential to assess the impact of WCSs on fish movement in managed marshes. These data, however, are lacking for many common estuarine fishes, and the utility of the data for the few species examined thus far is limited. We examined critical swimming speeds and derived linear relationships between fish size and swimming speed for juveniles of six common estuarine fish species of the southeast U.S. and northern Gulf of Mexico coasts. White mullet Mugil curema displayed the greatest swimming ability among these six species and was able to swim against currents ≥ 30 cm s−1 higher than the other species examined at the same size. The remaining species displayed lower critical swimming speeds and were classified into groups of moderate (pinfish Lagodon rhomboides, striped mullet Mugil cephalus) or slow (silver perch Bairdiella chrysoura, spotfin mojarra Eucinostomus argenteus, spot Leiostomus xanthurus) swimmers. Our results suggest that high-flow conditions at WCSs would likely preclude the passage of all but the largest juvenile fishes, and passage for most juveniles would occur under low-flow conditions; these flows at WCSs are dictated largely by site-specific tidal and weather conditions. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Wetlands Ecology and Management Springer Journals

Swimming abilities of juvenile estuarine fishes: implications for passage at water control structures

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer_journal/swimming-abilities-of-juvenile-estuarine-fishes-implications-for-DDNd0WqibV
Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
Subject
Life Sciences; Freshwater & Marine Ecology; Conservation Biology/Ecology; Environmental Law/Policy/Ecojustice; Marine & Freshwater Sciences; Hydrology/Water Resources; Water Quality/Water Pollution
ISSN
0923-4861
eISSN
1572-9834
DOI
10.1007/s11273-017-9580-9
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The capability of early life history stage fishes to access nursery habitat within managed salt marshes is dependent on their ability to negotiate water control structures (WCSs). Knowledge of swimming ability and hydrodynamic preferences is essential to assess the impact of WCSs on fish movement in managed marshes. These data, however, are lacking for many common estuarine fishes, and the utility of the data for the few species examined thus far is limited. We examined critical swimming speeds and derived linear relationships between fish size and swimming speed for juveniles of six common estuarine fish species of the southeast U.S. and northern Gulf of Mexico coasts. White mullet Mugil curema displayed the greatest swimming ability among these six species and was able to swim against currents ≥ 30 cm s−1 higher than the other species examined at the same size. The remaining species displayed lower critical swimming speeds and were classified into groups of moderate (pinfish Lagodon rhomboides, striped mullet Mugil cephalus) or slow (silver perch Bairdiella chrysoura, spotfin mojarra Eucinostomus argenteus, spot Leiostomus xanthurus) swimmers. Our results suggest that high-flow conditions at WCSs would likely preclude the passage of all but the largest juvenile fishes, and passage for most juveniles would occur under low-flow conditions; these flows at WCSs are dictated largely by site-specific tidal and weather conditions.

Journal

Wetlands Ecology and ManagementSpringer Journals

Published: Sep 23, 2017

References