An approach to understanding habitat dynamics of flatfishes: Advantages of biotelemetry

The northeast United States continental shelf waters, and other coastal areas throughout the world, experience great annual temperature ranges. In response, coastal fishes, including flatfishes, make extensive migrations that are roughly delineated by the seasonal progression of tolerable isotherms. In addition to changing adult distribution, migrations affect the placement of progeny relative to highly dynamic oceanographic features with a potential for strong consequence to their recruitment success. Annual and interannual migration patterns are poorly understood for even some of the most ecologically and economically important species. In part, this is due to a lack of understanding of the variation in individual movement, whether migrants respond as a single population or as multiple contingents. The ability to monitor individual residency and movement is desirable for understanding coastal population structure. As a result of the above, our long-term goals are to determine (1) the patterns of timing, extent, and rates of migration, and (2) how these patterns are influenced by natural and anthropogenic variables. Acoustic telemetry technology is now available to track individual fish, both passively and actively, and thus effectively address these goals.