No long-term effect of intracoelomic acoustic transmitter implantation on survival, growth, and body condition of a long-lived stenotherm in the wild

Abstract

A fundamental assumption of biotelemetry studies is that there are no adverse consequences from the surgical implantation or presence of the acoustic transmitter. In fisheries, most studies have evaluated this assumption over only short time periods (<2 years) in a laboratory setting. Here we compared the survival, growth, and body condition of populations of lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) in three lakes containing tagged and untagged individuals over a 12-year period (2002–2013). We found no significant negative effects of acoustic telemetry tagging on the long-term survival of fish (estimates of combined annual survival ranged from 67% to 91%) and no negative effect of surgical implantation on growth or body condition for fish of either sex. Additionally, we found no significant effect of transmitter:fish mass ratio on fish survival, growth (with the exception of smaller-bodied fish in one lake), or condition. Our results indicate the use of transmitters weighing <1.25% (in water) of fish mass is a desirable criterion for larger-bodied adult lake trout. Our findings support the assumption that long-lived fish species tagged with acoustic transmitters via intracoelomic surgery survive, grow, and maintain body condition similar to untagged conspecifics over the long term in the wild.