Shark predation on migrating adult American eels (Anguilla rostrata) in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

ABSTRACT: In an attempt to document the migratory pathways and the environmental conditions encountered by American eels during their oceanic migration to the Sargasso Sea, we tagged eight silver eels with miniature satellite pop-up tags during their migration from the St. Lawrence River in Québec, Canada. Surprisingly, of the seven tags that successfully transmitted archived data, six were ingested by warm-gutted predators, as observed by a sudden increase in water temperature. Gut temperatures were in the range of 20 to 25°C-too cold for marine mammals but within the range of endothermic fish. In order to identify the eel predators, we compared their vertical migratory behavior with those of satellite-tagged porbeagle shark and bluefin tuna, the only endothermic fishes occurring non-marginally in

SUBMITTER: Beguer-Pon M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3474790 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature