Inner Bay of Fundy Striped Bass

The Shubenacadie-Stewiacke rivers system is an important spawning and wintering area for Bay of Fundy (BoF) Striped Bass. BoF Striped Bass support economically and culturally significant indigenous food fisheries and a large recreational angling fishery. The effects of these fisheries on population status are difficult to assess because of data deficiencies concerning removal rates.

This principal objective of this project is to monitor inter-annual total mortality (Z) of striped bass that are > the minimum legal retention size of 68 cm Total Length and to relate the annual rates of annual recruitments as estimated from young-of-the-year abundance surveys and fishery-independent indices of number at age. Acoustic tags with expected operational times exceeding 6 years are used to track individual fish through several spawning and over-wintering cycles.

Hydrophones are deployed during April to July in the spawning areas in tidal waters and maintained through the calendar year in the non-tidal section of the Shubenacadie River to monitor annual returns to the spawning and wintering grounds respectively. The acoustic tags and hydrophone array are as well used to support a number of other research and monitoring initiatives including Striped Bass-Atlantic Salmon interactions, and American eel and Atlantic tomcod migration studies.