A Simple Fish Tag Suitable for Long-Term Marking Experiments

Abstract

A simple, inexpensive fish tag that allows for growth of the fish is described. Growth rates of smallmouth bass were not significantly affected by tagging. The rate of retention on smallmouth bass was much higher than that for a tag described by Fraser but rates of retention of the two tags on largemouth bass were not significantly different. Estimated rates of tag loss were 15% after 1 year for smallmouth bass and 17% after 3 years for largemouth bass. Observed tag losses from white suckers over 3 years were only 0.6%.Using this method, two or three persons can conveniently tag fish at a rate of approximately 30 per hour.

Dynamics of a Boreal Lake Ecosystem during a Long-Term Manipulation of Top Predators

“…No sampling occurred in 1993No sampling occurred in , 1996No sampling occurred in and 1998. Using trap nets we captured, tagged (White and Beamish 1972) and recorded the fork length (mm) and weight (g) of each individual that moved from Lake 222 to Lake 221 in the spring of 1987, and conducted a mark-recapture study in Lake 221 using the Jolly-Seber closed population model (Seber 1982) from this time to fall 1994. As Lake 221 does not have a discrete inflow the lake was treated as a closed system and therefore immigration and emigration did not occur.…”

Movements and biological statistics of lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) populations from the St. Lawrence and Ottawa River system, Quebec

“…Of these, 200 were sublegal rejects from the commercial fisi~ery and the remainder were caught in gill nets by our field teams (onesize-mesh gill nets, stretched meshes varying from 3.8 to 30.5 cm; Table 1). Three types of tags were used: spaghetti tags fastened according to the method of White and Beamish (1972) …”

Individual Identification of Goldfish from Eye Morphology: The Eye Mark Method

“…Various tagging methods using externally identifiable materials, including pigments and threads, have been developed for fish (Heugel et al, 1977;Pierson and Bayne, 1983;White and Beamish, 1972). Internal tagging using PIT tags and RFID tags has also recently been developed and can be used to identify large numbers of individuals (Sakalski et al, 1998;Sato et al, 2006;Cousin et al, 2012).…”

“…A number of methods for individual identification have been developed for ecological and behavioral studies in both natural and laboratory conditions (Heugel et al, 1977;Moodie and Salfert, 1982;Pierson and Bayne, 1983;Sorensen et al, 1983;Buckley et al, 1994). Of these, tagging with externally identifiable materials such as fluorescent pigments (Pierson and Bayne, 1983), elastomer (Bonneau et al, 1995;Leblanc and Noakes, 2012), and thread-like materials (White and Beamish, 1972), and scarring of body parts (Rinne, 1976;Welch and Mills, 1981;Sorensen et al, 1983), have been widely and traditionally used for both batch marking and individual marking. However, tags may be lost, scars may fade, and scarred areas may regenerate (Welch and Mills, 1981).…”