Authors: A J Frisch
Publish Date: 2007/01/30
Volume: 26, Issue: 2, Pages: 311-317
Abstract
Understanding movements of palinurid spiny lobsters is important to fisheries management However movement data obtained with markcapture techniques are often influenced by artefacts eg displacement tagloss taginduced injury To avoid these problems a novel approach was employed to investigate the movements of an important coral reef palinurid the painted lobster Panulirus versicolor Eighty adult individuals were captured by hand near Northwest Island Australia Each lobster was tagged internally with elastomer and externally with plastic zipties to enable both short 1–10 days and longterm 6–24 months observations Shortly thereafter all lobsters were manually returned to their shelters dens After 6–24 months 44 lobsters were recaptured giving an overall recapture rate of 55 All of these individuals were recaptured within 500 m of their original den thus indicating a high level of sitefidelity for this species Shortterm observations revealed that individuals moved frequently to and from nearby dens and that male lobsters typically moved further than female lobsters It is hypothesized that male lobsters move about their home range more actively perhaps to seek mating opportunities or to defend resources The significance of these observations is discussed with respect to the management of this important fishery resourceField assistance was provided by K Munkres R Groom N Hardeman J Frisch and S Frisch J Frisch showed me where to find P versicolor and kindly agreed not to hunt them for the duration of this study JP Hobbs K Munkres and two anonymous reviewers provided useful comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript James Cook University is gratefully acknowledged for the provision of logistical support throughout this study
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