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The Spawning Run of Blueback Herring in the St. Johns River, Florida
The Spawning Run of Blueback Herring in the St. Johns River, Florida
- Source :
- Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. 139:598-609
- Publication Year :
- 2010
- Publisher :
- Wiley, 2010.
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Abstract
- Blueback herring Alosa aestivalis are anadromous, iteroparous, winter spawners in the St. Johns River, Florida, but published data about this population are limited. We collected adults by electrofishing in the upper St. Johns River during the 2002–2005 spawning runs to examine the abundance, distribution, size, sex ratio, reproductive biology, and feeding habits of the population. When possible, data from the present study were compared with those for blueback herring collected with seine nets in the lower St. Johns River during the 1972 and 1973 spawning runs. Blueback herring began upstream migration by January and stayed in the river until at least April. The average fish size was significantly smaller in 2002–2005 than in 1972–1973, but sex ratios were not different from 1:1 in 5 of the 6 years studied. The more recent collections suggest that blueback herring females released multiple batches of eggs during one spawning season (spawning a batch every 3–4 d on average) and that spawning occu...
Details
- ISSN :
- 15488659 and 00028487
- Volume :
- 139
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Transactions of the American Fisheries Society
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........7430ba402d664731e57fe715203f19ff
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1577/t09-068.1