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Within‐Season Homing Movements of Displaced Mature Sunapee Trout (Salvelinus alpinus) in Floods Pond, Maine
Author(s) -
McCleave James D.,
Labar George W.,
Kircheis Frederick W.
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
transactions of the american fisheries society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.696
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1548-8659
pISSN - 0002-8487
DOI - 10.1577/1548-8659(1977)106<156:whmodm>2.0.co;2
Subject(s) - salvelinus , trout , homing (biology) , fishery , shore , overcast , environmental science , biology , fish <actinopterygii> , ecology , geography , sky , meteorology
Abstract Tagging, displacement and recapture, and ultrasonic tracking of displaced mature Sunapee trout (Salvelinus alpinus) in Floods Pond, Maine, demonstrated that rapid within‐season homing occurs in this relict form of Arctic char. Of the trout displaced about 1.8 km from their spawning ground from 1972 to 1975, 9% to 32% were recaptured one to four times within the same spawning season in trap nets set on the spawning ground. Eight of 14 trout tracked ultrasonically in 1975 horned in 2.5 to 10.0 h. Movements of the homing fish were variable; some trout homed paralleling the shoreline, others horned in open water or used a combination of near‐shore and open‐water movements. Behavior was similar between the sexes and during day and night, although two fish did begin to move just at sundown. Swimming speeds ranged from 15 to 35 cm s −1 and averaged about 0.6 body lengths s −1 . Swimming directions were not influenced by wind and wave direction, nor were swimming speeds within individual tracks influenced by cloud cover, wave height, or water depth. Heavy overcast at night may have inhibited movement. Sunapee trout are apparently familiar with the entire lake and travel widely within it. Visual features are postulated as orientational cues, though use of such cues is not clearly demonstrated by our experiments.