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Publications (265)
Hook removal devices have been developed to enable rapid release of angled fish, yet little research has evaluated their effectiveness and potential for injury among hook types. We compared the performance of hook removal tools and bare hands with four hook types on freshwater Lepomid sunfish. Dehooking performance was assessed using hook removal t...
Acoustic telemetry is a popular approach used to track many different aquatic animal taxa in marine and freshwater systems. However, information derived from focal studies is typically resource‐ and geography‐limited by the extent and placement of acoustic receivers. Even so, animals tagged and tracked in one region or study may be detected unexpec...
Individual fish movement patterns and behaviors influence population-level traits, and are important for understanding their ecology and evolution. Understanding these behaviors is key for managing and conserving migratory animal populations, including Atlantic tarpon (Megalops atlanticus), that support an economically important recreational fisher...
There is a growing body of research focused on how angled fish respond to catch-and-release (C&R). However, most of those studies do not span a wide range of body sizes for the targeted species. Physical injury and physiological responses to C&R can be size-dependent, and methods used for landing fish of different sizes vary. As such, studying the...
Recreational fishing (RF) is a large yet undervalued component of fisheries globally. While progress has been made in monitoring, assessing, and managing the sector in isolation, integration of RF into the management of multi‐sector fisheries has been limited, particularly relative to the commercial sector. This marginalises recreational fishers an...
Objective
Anglers typically use stringers to keep fish intended for harvest from spoiling or for high‐grading purposes (i.e., culling). However, relatively few studies have examined the effects of temporary stringer retention on the physical condition and postrelease mortality of fish. In this study, our objective was to investigate the lethal and...
The biological consequences of catch-and-release angling have been studied for decades, yet little is known about the compounding effects of repeated recreational fisheries recaptures on the physiology and behaviour of angled fish. Using heart rate biologgers and behavioural assays, this study investigated the physiological and behavioural conseque...
Research from terrestrial communities shows that diminished predation risk is a principal driver of heterospecific grouping behavior, with foraging ecology predicting the roles that species play in groups, as more vulnerable foragers preferentially join more vigilant ones from whom they can benefit. Meanwhile, field studies examining the adaptive s...
The global COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many jurisdictions implementing orders restricting the movements of people to inhibit virus transmission, with recreational angling often either not permitted or access to fisheries and/or related infrastructure being prevented. Following the lifting of restrictions, initial angler surveys and licence sales...
Atlantic tarpon (Megalops atlanticus) support an economically important fishery, yet there is limited information on the status of their fishery and population. A survey consisting of anglers and fishing guides was administered to help address these data deficiencies and to better understand the current and historical status of the recreational Atl...
Modified bite-shortened hooks show promise for enabling easy handling and rapid release of fish captured by recreational anglers, with the potential to reduce injury and stress of released fish. This study investigated whether bite-shortened modified hooks were effective at improving fish welfare relative to more traditional hook configurations. We...
Coastal marine fisheries and the habitats that support them are under extensive and increasing pressures from numerous anthropogenic stressors that occur at multiple spatial and temporal scales and often intersect in unexpected ways. Frequently, the scales at which these fisheries are managed do not match the scales of the stressors, much less the...
Permit (Trachinotus falcatus) support recreational fisheries in South Florida, and there is limited monitoring to assess population trends. To address this knowledge deficiency, we conducted a survey of Permit anglers and fishing guides to collect local ecological knowledge (LEK) on fisheries trends, focused mainly on the Florida Keys. Respondents...
Understanding the factors that contribute to fish impairment and survival from angling events is essential to guide best angling practices for catch-and-release (C&R) recreational fisheries. Complex interactions often exist between angler behaviour, environmental conditions, and fish characteristics that ultimately determine biological outcomes for...
Nearshore fish communities in marine flats ecosystems are recognised as being key for early life stages of socio-economically valued fish species, as well as small-bodied forage fishes, yet little is known about the spatial ecology of these fishes. Recent advances in acoustic telemetry have allowed for the tagging of small fish. Here, we used the s...
Biophysical models are a powerful tool for assessing population connectivity of marine organisms that broadcast spawn. Albula vulpes is a species of bonefish that is an economically and culturally important sportfish found throughout the Caribbean and that exhibits genetic connectivity among geographically distant populations. We created ontogeneti...
Permit (Trachinotus falcatus) occupy a variety of coastal marine habitats and support valuable recreational fisheries in their home region of the Caribbean Sea. As an aggregate spawning species, Permit require careful management in locations such as the Florida Keys where they experience substantial fishing pressure. We used acoustic telemetry to e...
Tropical and subtropical coastal flats are shallow regions of the marine environment at the intersection of land and sea. These regions provide myriad ecological goods and services, including recreational fisheries focused on flats-inhabiting fishes such as bonefish, tarpon, and permit. The cascading effects of climate change have the potential to...
Fish captured and released by recreational anglers are often exposed to air to enable hook removal and for admiration (e.g., photography). It is necessary to identify thresholds for air exposure that minimize sublethal alterations to inform best practice guidelines yet doing so in ecological-relevant field settings is challenging. We developed a no...
Fishing guides are held in high esteem by recreational fishing clients whom they likely influence (for better or worse) through role-modelling. This, coupled with consensus that angler behaviour is a key determinant of ecological outcomes in the catch-and-release (C&R) process suggests exploring the state of fishing guide knowledge, attitudes and b...
This study investigated the potential effects of red tide events (blooms of the toxin-producing dinoflagellate, Karenia brevis) on Atlantic tarpon (Megalops atlanticus), a long-lived migratory game fish, along the southwestern coast of Florida. In this region, red tides have long been associated with mass mortality events of marine organisms and ot...
Locomotion is a defining characteristic that can dictate many aspects of an organism's life history in the pursuit of maximizing fitness, including escaping predators, capturing prey, and transitioning between habitats. Exhaustive exercise can have negative consequences for both short-term and long-term energetics and life history trade-offs, influ...
Bonefish (Albula spp.) have ecological, economic, and cultural importance throughout their tropical and subtropical range. These fish reside primarily in shallow, nearshore habitats, and their movement patterns are largely dominated by tidal flows, thermal regime, and seasonal spawning migrations. Previous studies of their spatial ecology show that...
Giant trevally (Caranx ignobilis, GT) are growing in popularity as a target for tourism-based recreational fisheries throughout their range in the Indo-Pacific. Although predominately catch-and-release (C&R), to date there is no species-specific scientific evidence to support capture and handling guidelines. As such, we examined how GT caught via f...
Post‐exercise mortality (PEM) may occur when fish exercise to exhaustion and are pushed so far beyond their physiological limits that they can no longer sustain life. Although fish exercise to overcome a variety of natural challenges, the phenomenon of PEM is most often observed as the result of interactions between fish and humans. The seminal wor...
Inland fisheries assessment and management are challenging given the inherent complexity of working in diverse habitats (e.g., rivers, lakes, wetlands) that are dynamic on organisms that are often cryptic and where fishers are often highly mobile. Yet, technoscience is offering new tools that have the potential to reimagine how inland fisheries are...
Sustainable catch-and-release fisheries are based on the assumption that most fish survive an angling event. The adoption of best practices has become important to help mitigate post-release injury, behavioral impairment and mortality. However, in any catch-and-release fishery, a proportion of fish will become inadvertently deeply hooked (e.g., in...
Movement of fishes in the aquatic realm is fundamental to their ecology and survival. Movement can be driven by a variety of biological, physiological, and environmental factors occurring across all spatial and temporal scales. The intrinsic capacity of movement to impact fish individually (e.g., foraging) with potential knock‐on effects throughout...
Telemetry has major potential for application to fish habitat science and management, but to date it is underutilized in this regard. We posit this is because (1) fish telemetry projects are often geared towards detecting fish movement, opposed to systematically sampling habitat selection, and (2) there are often differences in scale between teleme...
Dehooking tools are often touted as a means to remove hooks from fish caught in recreational fisheries, especially for fish intended for release. We used Bluegill as a model species to test the efficacy of five dehooking tools as well as bare hands, for both barbed and barbless hooks. Bare hands took the longest to dehook fish, and there was little...
Recreational fisheries are diverse in scale, scope, and participation worldwide, constituting an important ecosystem service of marine and freshwater ecosystems. Management of these socio‐ecological systems is challenged by monitoring gaps, stemming from difficulties engaging with participants, biased sampling, and insufficient resources to conduct...
There is growing evidence that bioenergetics can explain relationships between environmental conditions and fish behaviour, distribution, and fitness. Fish energetic needs increase predictably with water temperature, but metabolic performance (i.e., aerobic scope) exhibits varied relationships, and there is debate about its role in shaping fish eco...
Interspecific interactions can play an essential role in shaping wildlife populations and communities. To date, assessments of interspecific interactions, and more specifically predator–prey dynamics, in aquatic systems over broad spatial and temporal scales (i.e., hundreds of km and multiple years) are rare due to constraints on our abilities to m...
Recent work in the Gulf of Maine multispecies recreational fishery has established responsible fishing practices that anglers can use to reduce bycatch and the discard mortality of three key groundfish species. However, anglers represent a diverse stakeholder group whose backgrounds and experiences may influence how they receive, support, and adopt...
Black bass Micropterus spp. live‐release tournaments are a popular activity in North America. Efforts continue to further increase survival and enhance welfare of fish released from competitive angling events. Recently, some tournaments have adopted a new weigh‐in format in which black bass are weighed immediately (hanging from a scale in air) and...
As catch-and-release becomes more popular and angling pressure increases, it is likely that fish in popular fisheries will experience catch-and-release events on more than one occasion (i.e., “multiple captures”). Anecdotal reports from anglers suggest that blue-finned mahseer (Tor khudree) in WASI Lake, Karnataka, India, commonly experience multip...
Shark depredation, the full or partial removal of a hooked fish by a shark before it is landed, is anecdotally increasing in the United States. Perceptions of depredation by anglers and fishing guides may influence their behavior and have cascading effects on sharks and recreational fisheries. However, to date, these perceptions have not been broad...
Micro‐fishing is an emerging form of predominantly catch‐and‐release recreational angling with the main target being diverse small‐bodied non‐game fish species and the early life stages of traditional game fish. While there has been an apparent increase in interest in micro‐fishing, little is known about its impacts on fish and fisheries. Here we c...
1. Animal movement and resource use are essential considerations for effective environmental management, but they are challenging to quantify in expansive natural ecosystems such as oceans.
2. We used a novel combination of fish tracking with expansive acoustic telemetry networks, stable isotope analysis, and integrated modeling techniques to char...
The effectiveness of catch‐and‐release as a conservation practice assumes minimal impacts to released fish. In most cases, angling‐related stressors can be mitigated via changes to angler behavior that reduce fight duration, handling, and air exposure. In some cases, stressors may significantly impact the ability of fish to engage in normal swimmin...
Catch-and-release is practiced in recreational fisheries under the premise that released fish will survive with negligible injury and stress. However, hooking injuries may prevent that outcome from being realized. One way to potentially minimize injuries and maximize survival in angled fish is to replace treble hooks on hard plastic lures with sing...
Numerous studies have investigated the impacts of catch-and-release on the post-release behaviour of fish during periods characterized by warm air and water temperatures. Comparatively little is known about the post-release behaviour of fish caught while ice fishing. Largemouth bass (LMB), a popular sportfish in North America, is sometimes encounte...
Recreational fishing is a growing sector of tourism, and in theory, can be done in a sustainable manner such as through catch-and-release where fish are released rather than harvested. In some cases, stakeholders have taken the initiative to develop conservation strategies and management guidelines, as well as establishing monitoring programs of th...
The COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding public health mitigation strategies have altered many facets of human life. And yet, little is known about how public health measures have impacted complex socio-ecological systems such as recreational fisheries. Using an online snowball survey, we targeted resident anglers in Ontario, Canada, to obtain preli...
There are a variety of tools that have been developed to aid in hook removal of angled fish that are intended for release. The premise of these tools is that they enable rapid hook removal while causing negligible injury to fish. Here we scientifically assessed the efficacy of dehooking tools for the removal of single barbed J-hooks from the jaw re...
Pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs) are important for mitigation and restoration efforts in the Anthropocene. As recreationists are motivated to engage in leisure activities to increase their own personal wellbeing, we submit that threats to wellbeing (an egocentric motivator) predict engagement in PEBs amongst recreationists. We also predict that...
Inland recreational fisheries have social, economic, and ecological importance worldwide but these fisheries are increasingly challenged by the diverse effects of climate change. Coupled with other anthropogenic stressors, climate change has contributed to declines in freshwater biodiversity of greater severity than those observed across marine or...
Data from the Integrated Tracking of Aquatic Animals in the Gulf of Mexico (iTAG) network, and sister networks, were used to evaluate fish movements in the Florida Keys—an extensive reef fish ecosystem just north of Cuba connecting the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. We analysed ~2 million detections for 23 species, ranging from reef fish such a...
Resource selection functions (RSFs) have been widely applied to animal tracking data to examine relative habitat selection and to help guide management and conservation strategies. While readily used in terrestrial ecology, RSFs have yet to be extensively used within marine systems. As acoustic telemetry continues to be a pervasive approach within...
Marine fish movement plays a critical role in ecosystem functioning and is increasingly studied with acoustic telemetry. Traditionally, this research has focused on single species and small spatial scales. However, integrated tracking networks, such as the Integrated Tracking of Aquatic Animals in the Gulf of Mexico (iTAG) network, are building the...
Technology that is developed for or adopted by the recreational fisheries sector (e.g., anglers and the recreational fishing industry) has led to rapid and dramatic changes in how recreational anglers interact with fisheries resources. From improvements in finding and catching fish to emulating their natural prey and accessing previously inaccessib...
Coral reef fisheries provide important ecosystem services to coastal communities, yet in the Pacific Islands, many of these contemporary fisheries are threatened by overexploitation. Historically, Pacific Island societies successfully utilized community-based management and spatial temporal closures to regulate the harvest of marine resources. In r...
Catch-and-release (C&R) angling is common with anglers releasing a portion of their catch to comply with harvest regulations or because of their conservation ethic. The basis of C&R lies in the assumption that a large proportion of the fish survive and experience limited fitness consequences – that is, the welfare status of individual fish is maint...
Atlantic tarpon Megalops atlanticus are important mesopredators in the western Atlantic Ocean, and the focus of a popular recreational fishery that targets them throughout their annual migration in the Gulf of Mexico and southeastern USA. Using 4 years of acoustic telemetry data, we quantified the seasonal variation in phenology of arrival and depa...
The premise of catch‐and‐release recreational angling is that post‐release survival is high. Therefore, it is common for anglers, management agencies, and conservation organizations to share information on handling practices and other strategies that are believed to improve the welfare and survival of fish that are released. A recent surge in popul...
The COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding public health mitigation strategies have altered many facets of human life. And yet, little is known about how public health measures have impacted complex socio-ecological systems such as recreational fisheries. Using a web-based online snowball survey, we targeted resident anglers in Ontario, Canada, to obt...
Recreational fishing can result in deep hooking (e.g. in the gullet) of fish that are intended to be released, leading to the development of various tools intended to assist with hook removal. So‐called “hook disgorgers” are typically marketed as being a mechanism to retrieve the hook while doing so in a way that reduces harm to the fish, despite t...
Coastal marine fishes that form spawning aggregations most commonly exhibit a two-point movement pattern, with locations separated by migration: home range to spawning aggregation site and return to home range. However, the bonefish, Albula vulpes, partakes in a unique three-point spawning migration. Bonefish migrate up to 80 km from shallow water...
National parks occur in most nations around the globe and tend to have a dual role of protecting natural heritage features while also providing opportunities for the public to interact with natural areas through recreation and leisure. National parks are afforded varying degrees of protection with recreational fishing allowed in some form within th...
Pacific Island nations and territories must build their capacity to harvest pelagic fishes to ensure domestic food security into the future. The Republic of Palau recently created the Palau National Marine Sanctuary, a Marine Managed Area that was intended to conserve marine resources and enhance local pelagic fisheries. However, the capacity of th...
Information on ecological systems often comes from diverse sources with varied levels of complexity, bias, and uncertainty. Accordingly, analytical techniques continue to evolve that address these challenges to reveal the characteristics of ecological systems and inform conservation actions. We applied multiple statistical learning algorithms (i.e....
Teleost fish that form predictable spawning aggregations and undertake reproductive migrations can be particularly vulnerable to overexploitation. To support community-based management of an artisanal fishery that targets bonefish (Albula glossodonta) spawning aggregations, we used a combination of acoustic telemetry, biological sampling, and remot...
Abstract Background A better understanding of sea turtle spatial ecology is critical for the continued conservation of imperiled sea turtles and their habitats. For resource managers to develop the most effective conservation strategies, it is especially important to examine how turtles use and select for habitats within their developmental foragin...
Millions of individuals worldwide rely on recreational fishing activities for leisure, food, and employment. Recreational fishing is the dominant freshwater fisheries sector in much of the highly developed world and plays a growing role in the marine realm, but in developing countries recreational fisheries occur within a different set of contextua...
The premise of catch-and-release angling is that most fish survive fisheries interactions. Therefore, it is common for anglers, management agencies, and other organizations to share information on handling practices and other strategies that are believed to improve fish welfare and survival. Recent media coverage has sensationalized the use of carb...
Micro‐fishing is an emerging form of recreational angling that targets small‐bodied fish in inland and marine waters. Although most fish are presumably released, some are retained as specimens for home aquaria or dissection to confirm identification. To date, very little is known about the effects of micro‐fishing on individuals (e.g., stress, inju...
Grouping behavior occurs across a wide variety of taxa, both within and between species. While members are thought to obtain foraging and antipredator advantages, they can also experience costs in the forms of competition or increased conspicuity to predators. The mechanisms behind these costs and benefits can vary depending on group composition, u...
