Population structure, migratory behavior and spawning habitat of East Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna revealed by a multi-annual electronic tagging program

, , , , , ,
1 Fisheries, WWF Mediterranean Programme Office, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
2 Núcleo Milenio - Centro de Conservación Marina CCM, Estación Costera de Investigaciones Marinas ECIM, Departamento de Ecología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Las Cruces, Valparaiso, Chile
3 Secretariat, ICCAT, Madrid, Spain
4 Centre Régional de Tanger/M ́diq, INRH, M ́nar-Tanger, Morocco
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.1813v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Animal Behavior, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Marine Biology
Keywords
Thunnus thynnus, habitat use, population structure, electronic tagging, Western Mediterranean, Atlantic coast of Morocco, Adriatic, migration
Copyright
© 2016 Quílez-Badia et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Quílez-Badia G, Ospina-Alvarez A, Sainz Trápaga S, Di Natale A, Abid N, Rodríguez López NA, Tudela S. 2016. Population structure, migratory behavior and spawning habitat of East Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna revealed by a multi-annual electronic tagging program. PeerJ Preprints 4:e1813v1

Abstract

During 2008-2014, 101 pop-up satellite and 31 internal archival electronic tags were deployed in bluefin tuna (12 to 250 kg in weight) in the Western and Central Mediterranean and in the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Time at liberty spanned from 18 to 391 days. In the Western and Central Mediterranean, two behavioral patterns / contingents (highly migratory and resident) were observed to co-occur. Imprinting of early Atlantic migrants is hypothesized to explain the existence of the two contingents. None of the “resident” individuals left the Mediterranean during the whole tracking period. None of the tuna present in the Mediterranean at some point crossed over to the Eastern Mediterranean. The occurrence of potential Mediterranean spawners in North Atlantic waters beyond the 45oW was also observed.

Author Comment

This is a preprint version of a manuscript submitted to Plos One journal (Feb 17 2016 12:15PM).

Supplemental Information

RAW DATA - Trajectories of all tagged tuna analyzed in this study

Raw data corresponding to the trajectories of all tagged tuna analyzed in this study

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.1813v1/supp-1