Stock Composition of the New York Bight Atlantic Sturgeon Fishery Based on Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA

Abstract

Abstract One of the few remaining fisheries for Atlantic sturgeon Acipenser oxyrinchus takes place during spring and fall in the New York Bight, but no information on the stock composition of this fishery is available. We used data from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis to estimate the relative contributions of source stocks of Atlantic sturgeon to a New York Bight fishery sample (N = 112) collected in 1993 and 1994. Composite mtDNA haplotype frequencies of source populations were first characterized with five informative restriction enzymes: Bgl I, Msp I, EcoR V, Hinf I, and Hinc II. All St. Lawrence River, Quebec, and St. John River, New Brunswick, specimens had an identical haplotype (genotypic diversity = 0.0); for the purposes of mixed-stock analysis, both populations were pooled as the “Canadian stock.” Genotypic diversity ranged between 0.483 and 0.750 among samples from the Hudson River in New York, the Edisto River in South Carolina, and the Ogeechee, Alt...