IMIS

To aid in the protection and conservation of a species it is important to define their spatial, temporal and behavioural characteristics throughout their lifecycle. This is especially true for species with a wide variability in habitats and feeding strategies in their lifecycle. Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) are an anadromous fish species spending part of their early life in freshwater and then adapting to move into the marine environment to mature fully into breeding adults, eventually returning to their natal rivers to spawn. The routes they take to get to the marine environment have not been described in great detail. These routes can be significant areas of conservation concern for this species, as any interruption of this migration into the marine environment could result in less fish returning to the natal rivers in future to spawn and the potential collapse of the population. The aim of this study is to define, in high resolution, the routes taken by this species from the north west of Ireland to the marine habitats in the North Atlantic. To do this, salmon smolt are tagged with acoustic V7 tags in their natal rivers in April and May. The movements of these tagged fish are then recorded by acoustic receivers (VR2Ws and VR2ARs) placed along the river, along an estuarine area, at the exit of the estuarine system into the sea, and from the sea into the open ocean. In total this project will run over 3 years, will tag around 150 salmon smolt, and incorporate over 135 acoustic receivers each year. There is also the potential of the marine array to record fish from other rivers which have also been acoustically tagged, and other species which are not the target of this study. Results from this study will be used to make recommendations for salmon management in this area. In addition to Atlantic salmon the SeaMonitor project will also aim to track and model the movements and behaviour of three other species: basking shark (basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus), harbour seal (Phoca vitulina), common skate or flapper skate (Dipturus batis) as well as species of the infraorder Cetacea such as bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops), harbour porpoise (Phococena phocoena), minke whale (Balaenoptera acutoorostrata), killer whale (Orcinus orca) and humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae).