Atlantic sturgeon presence in a designated marine hydrokinetic test site prior to turbine deployment: A baseline study

Abstract

In 2009, the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy (FORCE) developed a 1.6 x 1.0 km Crown Lease Area (CLA) to test Marine Hydrokinetic devices (MHKs) in Minas Passage (MP), a strait that connects the Bay of Fundy to Minas Basin (MB), Nova Scotia. Minas Basin is an important summer feeding aggregation site for numerous fishes including Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus Mitchill, 1815) stocks from Canada and the US. In this study, acoustic tagging technology was used to describe sturgeon presence in the CLA, as well as an adjacent site proposed for MHKs deployment. During 2018 and 2019, 33.9% (n = 19/56 Atlantic sturgeon tagged) and 29.9% (n = 23/77 Atlantic sturgeon tagged) respectively, of sturgeon acoustically tagged in MB during 2014–2019 were detected in these two FORCE sites. Binomial General Linear Models (GLMs) were fit to determine if environmental parameters influenced the presence, or depth of Atlantic sturgeon in the FORCE sites. The only significant predictor of Atlantic sturgeon depth and presence at the FORCE sites was tide type. Atlantic sturgeon was found to have a higher likelihood of being detected during ebb tide (12%) as opposed to flood tide (3%). Apparent decline in the presence of sturgeon during flood tide was probably due to poor signal reception caused by turbulence from higher current speeds. Tagged sturgeon travelled through the FORCE sites pelagically at similar depths (27.5 ± 14.57 m) to those proposed for seabed mounted MHKs (~30 m), travelling deeper during flood tide than ebb, suggesting they may be at risk of spatial overlap with MHKs. While this study indicated that the duration Atlantic sturgeon utilized the FORCE sites throughout the summer appeared to be low, sturgeon from both endangered and threatened stocks migrated through this region during their yearly entry and exit to MB and were present for approximately 12% of the days assessed in this study.