Long-term effects and recovery from surgical implantation of dummy transmitters in two marine fishes

Abstract

We surgically implanted black sea bass and summer flounder with dummy transmitters and monitored recovery, survival, and growth during an 11-month post-operative period. We also examined transmitter retention rates as neither species had been previously implanted with transmitters. Recovery time from surgery and anesthesia was significantly greater than recovery time from anesthesia alone for black sea bass, but this relation was not observed for summer flounder. Summer flounder recovery times were highly variable, but in general, smaller fish had longer recovery times. All black sea bass and summer flounder retained their surgically implanted transmitter at least 11 months and had high survival rates in laboratory trials (black sea bass survival, 97.9%; summer flounder survival, 94.6%). Nonparametric analyses of covariance using initial size as the covariate indicated that black sea bass exhibited no significant detrimental growth effects after 11 months, but significantly slower growth was observed for summer flounder (this was especially pronounced in the larger [> 800 g] fish). Surgical implantation of acoustic transmitters in these species can be used to conduct long-term field studies of habitat use and movements because fish exhibited high survival rates and 100% retention of transmitters.