Abstract
For stock enhancement purposes, chum salmon Oncorhynchus keta fry are frequently released from mid- or upstream hatcheries. In the Chitose River in northern Japan, it was thought that numerous exotic piscivorous brown trout Salmo trutta migrate to the hatchery from distant downstream habitats to prey on fry during the period when around 30 million fry are released into the river (> 1 million at a time). In this study, we investigated the validity of this belief. Of 34 brown trout that were acoustically tagged and released about 10 km downstream from the hatchery, none appeared near the hatchery during the fry release period. Underwater visual censuses showed that the number of brown trout near the hatchery did not increase drastically during the release period. Dietary analysis showed that brown trout captured both near the hatchery and about 10 km downstream had preyed on > 100 fry released the day before their capture. Our results suggest that brown trout did not migrate to the hatchery from distant downstream habitats because the rapidly dispersing, large masses of fry provided easy prey for the brown trout regardless of proximity to the hatchery.
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Data availability
Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful for staff members at the Japan Sea Salmon Enhancement Program Association and the Hokkaido Research Organization, particularly M. Ando and H. Saneyoshi, for collecting fish for tagging. We thank staff members at the Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency, particularly S. Yoshimitsu and T. Morishita, for their comprehensive cooperation. We also thank K. Morita of The University of Tokyo for his helpful advice in earlier stages of this study.
Funding
This study was supported by KAKENHI grant number JP19K06197.
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K Honda and K Hasegawa conceived and designed the investigation. K Honda, K Hasegawa, IO, and KM performed field and/or laboratory work. K Honda analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript, with contributions from the other authors.
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The experiments in this study were conducted in accordance with guidelines for animal experiments at the Fisheries Resources Institute, Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency (FRI-R3-01).
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Honda, K., Hasegawa, K., Ono, I. et al. Piscivorous brown trout Salmo trutta does not migrate from distant downstream habitats to a massive release site for chum salmon Oncorhynchus keta fry in the Chitose River, northern Japan. Environ Biol Fish 106, 707–715 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-023-01402-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-023-01402-4