Serena Wright

• Fish Ecologist at Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science

In fisheries, genetic based assignment of individuals to their population of origin can benefit efforts aimed at monitoring and managing stocks. Assignment combined with knowledge of the migration history of individuals can provide powerful insights into mechanisms of genetic mixing, for which refined sampling methods are required to minimise any i...

Biologging has been used on a range of wild animals to document spectacular feats of migration and behaviour. We describe the pursuit, capture, and ingestion of an adult Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) (175 cm, estimated weight: 81 kg), which was instrumented with a biologging tag, by a predator, most likely an orca (Orcinus orca). The pred...

The movements and behaviour of mature European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax L.) in UK waters have not been studied extensively since a series of mark-recapture experiments during the 1970s, 80s and 90s. To better understand the timing and extent of seasonal migrations, 171 mature sea bass > 42 cm were internally tagged with floated electronic tag...

The movement ecology of European seabass, Dicentrarchus labrax, remains poorly understood, especially in the northern ranges of its distribution. To investigate migration patterns of seabass from the southern North Sea, we combined data from different projects from four countries using various tagging techniques. This resulted in 146 recaptures (ou...

Knowledge of the three-dimensional movement patterns of elasmobranchs is vital to understand their ecological roles and exposure to anthropogenic pressures. To date, comparative studies among species at global scales have mostly focused on horizontal movements. Our study addresses the knowledge gap of vertical movements by compiling the first globa...

The size, type and abundance of planktonic organisms influence the efficiency with which carbon is transferred through the lower trophic levels, ultimately affecting dynamics at the higher trophic levels of the marine food web. In temperate shelf sea, such as the waters south-west of the UK, the plankton growing season span from early spring to aut...

Determining the mechanisms driving range-wide reductions in Atlantic salmon marine survival is hindered by an insufficient understanding of their oceanic ecology and distribution. We attached 204 pop-up satellite archival tags to post-spawned salmon when they migrated to the ocean from seven European areas and maiden North American salmon captured...

The yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares: YFT) is a widely distributed, migratory species that supports valuable commercial fisheries. Landings of YFT are seasonally and spatially variable, reflecting changes in their availability and accessibility to different fleets and metiers which, in turn, has implications for sustainable management. Understandi...

The yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) is a widely distributed, migratory species that supports valuable commercial fisheries throughout their range. Management of migratory species requires knowledge of movement, mixing and key life history parameters such as growth rate, natural and fisheries mortality. Current management is based on the assumpti...

Commercial landings of starry smooth-hound Mustelus asterias in northern European seas are increasing, whilst our knowledge of their ecology, behaviour and population structure remains limited. M. asterias is a widely distributed demersal shark, occupying the waters of the southern North Sea and Irish Sea in the north, to at least the southern Bay...

Yellowfin tuna are the mainstay of the traditional tuna fisheries in St Helena waters, but there is limited knowledge of their ecology and feeding behaviour in the area. In this study yellowfin tuna stomach contents were used to assess spatio‐temporal changes in feeding strategy and consider the role of tuna in the local ecosystem. Comparisons of t...

Yellowfin tuna (YFT; Thunnus albacares) are commercially the most important species in the waters around St Helena, with landings above 170,000 kg in 2015, 2016 & 2017. Since November 2015, YFT have been tagged with conventional and satellite tags around St Helena Island, with the goal of better understanding their movement patterns. Conventional t...

Artificial structures in the marine environment may have direct and/or indirect impact on the behaviour and space use of mobile foragers. This study explores whether environmental and physical features in the North Sea-including artificial structures (wrecks, wind turbines, cables, and oil and gas structures) were associated with local abundance of...

Chemical pollution of the marine environment from anthropogenic sources is a global concern due to the potential for long term effects on the ecosystem. Chemical monitoring schemes can detect harmful substances in water, sediment or biota. However, the presence of specific determinants gives no information on how individual species or the ecosystem...

Understanding how, where, and when animals move is a central problem in marine ecology and conservation. Key to improving our knowledge about what drives animal movement is the rising deployment of telemetry devices on a range of free‐roaming species. An increasingly popular way of gaining meaningful inference from an animal's recorded movements is...

There is increasing interest in macroalgae farming in European waters for a range of applications, including food, chemical extraction for biofuel production. This study uses a 3-D numerical model of hydrodynamics and biogeochemistry to investigate potential production and environmental effects of macroalgae farming in UK and Dutch coastal waters....

The energy savings experienced by fish swimming in a school have so far been investigated in an near-idealised experimental context including a relatively laminar water flow. The effects of explicitly turbulent flows and different group sizes are yet to be considered. Our repeated-measures study is a first step in addressing both of these issues: w...

There is increasing interest in macroalgae farming in European waters for a range of applications, including food, chemical extraction and as biofuels. This study uses a 3D numerical model of hydrodynamics and biogeochemistry to investigate potential production and environmental effects of macroalgae farming in UK and Dutch coastal waters. The mode...

Small-scale pollution events involve the release of potentially harmful substances into the marine environment. These events can affect all levels of the ecosystem, with damage to both fauna and flora. Numerous reporting structures are currently available to document spills, however there is a lack of information on small-scale events due to their...

Nine trace elements including As, Cd, Cu, Fe, Hg, Ni, Pb, V and Zn, and total petroleum hydrocarbons were analysed from water samples collected from 23 stations since 1984 from Kuwaiti coastal waters. Here it was investigated whether concentrations of these determinants are at levels above Kuwaiti and internationally established assessment criteria...

Baseline Spatial and temporal analysis of the risks posed by polychlorinated biphenyl and metal contaminants in dab (Limanda limanda) collected from waters around England and Wales The metals cadmium, mercury and lead, and the ICES7 CB levels were analysed in the common dab Limanda limanda to investigate whether concentrations of these determinants...

Monitoring temperature of aquatic waters is of great importance, with modelled, satellite and in-situ data providing invaluable insights into long-term environmental change. However, there is often a lack of depth-resolved temperature measurements. Recreational dive computers routinely record temperature and depth, so could provide an alternate and...

The swim bladder provides a mechanism for buoyancy regulation in teleosts. However, in certain species, its location can result in an unstable body position, with associated energetic costs assumed for maintaining posture in addition to the energetic demands from swimbladder volume regulation. Direct observations show that some body-compressed, cav...

Aim Estimating environmental suitability from species distribution data is crucial in defining spatial conservation measures. To this end, species distribution models ( SDM s) are commonly applied, but seldom validated by completely independent data. Here, we use data on individual tracks derived from electronic tags as an alternative means of vali...

Metabolic rate is a critical factor in animal biology and ecology, providing an objective measure that can be used in attributing a cost to different activities and to assessing what animals do against some optimal behaviour. Ideally, metabolic rate would be estimated directly by measuring heat output but, until recently, this has not been easily t...

The environmental risks of 22 contaminants, comprising 6 metals, 10 PAHs and 6 PCB congeners occurring in UK estuaries and coastal waters were assessed as single substances. Sediment samples were taken within 12 nautical miles of the English and Welsh coastlines between 1999 and 2011. The measured environmental concentrations were compared to quali...

The ability to define and quantify the behaviour and energetic costs of different activities is fundamental to a full understanding of fish ecology and movement, but monitoring activity and measuring energy expenditure in fish in the field is problematic. New telemetry methods using data loggers that incorporate tri-axial accelerometers promise to...

Activity patterns of animals often relate to environmental variables such as food availability and predation pressure. Technological advances are providing us with new tools to monitor and better understand these activity patterns. We used animal-attached data loggers recording acceleration and depth to compare activity patterns and vertical habita...

There was an error published in J. Exp. Biol. 216, 1255-1264. The author affiliations for Paolo Domenici and John Fleng Steffensen were incorrectly displayed. The correct version is given below. Franziska Broell1,*, Takuji Noda², Serena Wright3,4, Paolo Domenici⁵, John Fleng Steffensen⁶, Jean-Pierre Auclair¹ and Christopher T. Taggart¹ ¹Department...

Monitoring and measuring the behaviour and movement of aquatic animals in the wild is typically challenging, though micro-accelerometer (archival or telemetry) tags now provide the means to remotely identify and quantify behavioural states and rates such as resting, swimming, and migrating, and to estimate activity and energy budgets. Most studies...