Implantation and Recovery of Long-Term Archival Transceivers in a Migratory Shark with High Site Fidelity
Date
2016-02-05
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Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLOS)
Abstract
We developed a long-term tagging method that can be used to understand species assemblages
and social groupings associated with large marine fishes such as the Sand Tiger
shark Carcharias taurus.We deployed internally implanted archival VEMCO Mobile Transceivers
(VMTs; VEMCO Ltd. Nova Scotia, Canada) in 20 adult Sand Tigers, of which two
tags were successfully recovered (10%). The recovered VMTs recorded 29,646 and 44,210
detections of telemetered animals respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first study to
demonstrate a method for long-term (~ 1 year) archival acoustic transceiver tag implantation,
retention, and recovery in a highly migratory marine fish. Results show low presumed
mortality (n = 1, 5%), high VMT retention, and that non-lethal recovery after almost a year at
liberty can be achieved for archival acoustic transceivers. This method can be applied to
study the social interactions and behavioral ecology of large marine fishes.
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Citation
Haulsee DE, Fox DA, Breece MW, Clauss TM, Oliver MJ (2016) Implantation and Recovery of Long-Term Archival Transceivers in a Migratory Shark with High Site Fidelity. PLoS ONE 11(2): e0148617. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0148617