Hypoxia and Sturgeons: report to the Chesapeake Bay Program Dissolved Oxygen Criteria Team
In this essay, three lines of evidence are developed that sturgeons in the Chesapeake Bay and elsewhere areunusually sensitive to hypoxic conditions: 1. In comparison to other fishes, sturgeons have a limitedbehavioral and physiological capacity to respond to hypoxia. Basal metabolism, growth, and consumptionare quite sensitive to changes in oxygen level, which may indicate a relatively poor ability by sturgeons tooxyregulate. 2. During summertime, temperatures >20 C amplify the effect of hypoxia on sturgeons andother fishes due to a temperature*oxygen "squeeze" (Coutant 1987)- In bottom waters, this interactionresults in substantial reduction of habitat; in dry years, nursery habitats in the Chesapeake Bay may beparticularly reduced or even eliminated. 3. While evidence for population level effects by hypoxia are circumstantial, there are corresponding trends between the absence of Atlantic sturgeon reproduction in estuaries like the Chesapeake Bay where summertime hypoxia predominates on a system-wide scale. Also, the recent and dramatic recovery of shortnose sturgeon in the Hudson River (4-fold increase in abundance from 1980 to 1995) may have been stimulated by improvement of a large portion of the nursery habitat thatwas restored from hypoxia to normoxia during the period 1973-1978. (PDF contains 26 pages)
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | monograph biblioteca |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Chesapeake Biological Laboratory
2001
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| Subjects: | Ecology, Conservation, Fisheries, Aquaculture, Environment, Sturgeon, hypoxia, respirometry, basal metabolism, Acipenser stellatus, shortnose sturgeon, rainbow trout, demersal, bioenergetics, Magothy, Fishing Bay, Susquehanna Flats, Severn, Choptank, Nanticoke, Potomac, Delaware Bay, York, Rappahannock, South Carolina, Hudson, |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1834/20789 |
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