Movement patterns of temperate wrasses (Labridae) within a small marine protected area

Abstract

The movement patterns of three commercially important wrasse (Labridae) species inside a small marine protected area (~0.15 km 2 ) on the west coast of Norway were analysed over a period of 21 months. The mean distance between capture and recapture locations varied between 10 and 187 m, and was species and season specific.The extent of movement was not related to body size or sex. These results imply that a network of small strategically located marine protected areas can be used as management tools to protect wrasses from size-and sex-selective fishing mortality.

Goldsinny wrasse (Ctenolabrus rupestris) have a sex‐dependent magnetic compass for maintaining site fidelity

“…Both male and female goldsinny wrasse appear to perform short seasonal migrations, moving to deeper waters in the winter, while returning to shallow waters in the spring (Halvorsen et al, 2021;Hilldén, 1981;Sayer et al, 1993;Skiftesvik et al, 2015). Our study suggests that males, but not females, have a strong motivation and T A B L E 1 Swimming kinematics of male and female goldsinny wrasse (Ctenolabrus rupestris) ability to orient toward their home when displaced.…”

“…Among the wrasse species present in Norway, goldsinny wrasse (Ctenolabrus rupestris) is one of the most abundant and is widely used as a cleaner fish (Skiftesvik et al, 2015). Understanding the movement and reproductive ecology of goldsinny wrasse will inform the management of the fishery, in particular the practice of fishers translocating and discarding wrasses that are too small to be used as cleaner fish (Halvorsen et al, 2021).…”

“…Goldsinny wrasse vacate their territories in autumn and undertake small-scale seasonal migrations from summer territories in shallow water toward deeper water in the winter (Halvorsen et al, 2021;Hilldén, 1981;Skiftesvik et al, 2015). This vertical movement is associated with seasonal changes in surface water temperature, which is an important driver of vertical distribution in wrasse species located in temperate areas such as the Norwegian coast (Freitas et al, 2021).…”

Finding coarse and fine scale population structure in a coastal species: population demographics meets genomics

“…For wrasse species, hard bottom substrate is an essential habitat, required to build nests where females lay their eggs (Darwall et al, 1992;Villegas-Ríos et al, 2013). Furthermore, telemetry studies showed that wrasses have small home ranges and individual movements are likely to be restricted to less that 300m (Halvorsen et al, 2021), suggesting that individual migration across Jaeren is unlikely. For the black goby, not much is known about individual movements, although they share similar life history traits with wrasses: adults black gobies are mostly sedentary, and males are also territorial, building and guarding nests where females lay their sticky eggs.…”

A contrastive learning approach for individual re-identification in a wild fish population

“…The dataset was collected in Austevoll, western Norway, 2018-2021, by catching corkwing wrasse by fyke nets left in the sea overnight and marking all captured individuals with uniquely coded passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags (11 mm tags, RFID Solutions). The tags were implanted in the abdominal cavity of the fish, see full sampling description in [8] and [9].…”