Vertical movement and habitat of opah Emphasis T

Authors: Jeffrey J Polovina Donald Hawn Melanie Abecassis

Publish Date: 2007/09/14

Volume: 153, Issue: 3, Pages: 257-267

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Abstract

Data from 11 popup archival transmitting tags attached to opah Lampris guttatus F Lampridae in the central North Pacific between November 2003 and March 2005 were used to describe their vertical movement and habitat In the subtropical gyre northwest of the Hawaiian Islands opah generally inhabited a 50–400 m depth range and 8–22°C temperatures They were frequently found in depths of 50–150 m at night and in greater depths 100–400 m during the day but were constantly moving vertically within this broad range At night excursions below 200 m were not uncommon and during the day they were very likely to spend some time at depths 175 m Their vertical speeds were generally 25 cm s−1 but on one occasion an opah descended at a burst speed of 4 m s−1 Vertical habitat use by individual opah apparently varied with local oceanographic conditions but over a 24h period the average temperature experienced was always in the narrow range of 147 to 165°CWe thank the captains and crews of the F/V Sea Pearl and F/V Kelly Ann used to tag the opah The Matlab scripts used in the correspondence analyses were written and kindly provided by Prof JeanPhilippe Labat and David Pellicer Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche University Pierre et Marie Curie Paris France This work was partially funded by a grant from the University of Hawaii Pelagic Fisheries Research Program under Cooperative Agreement NA17RJ12301 from NOAA and a grant from the Ocean Exploration Program NOAA

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