Discard mortality rates of Red Snapper after barotrauma and hook trauma: Insights from using acoustic telemetry in the U.S. South Atlantic North American Journal of Fisheries Management

We studied discard mortality of Red Snapper Lutjanus campechanus, a reef species that experiences barotrauma and hook trauma in its U.S. hook-and-line fisheries. Annual numbers of discarded Red Snapper far exceed those harvested in federal fisheries management regions, a phenomenon that emphasizes the importance of quantifying discard fates. To estimate discard mortality, three-dimensional movement data were collected using acoustic telemetry tags and a 3-km2 array of receivers deployed in 2019 and 2023 at a natural reef area (38 m deep) off North Carolina. Release treatments were jaw-hooked or deep-hooked fish; all fish were returned to depth with a recompression device. We assigned a fate for each released Red Snapper based on movement profiles revealed by the acoustic detection data; fates included discard mortality, lost tag, emigrated/harvested, or alive within the array when the receivers were retrieved. A Kaplan–Meier survivorship analysis was used to estimate the rates of discard survival for each release treatment. Our study provides estimates of discard mortality for Red Snapper at a depth where the species is often captured in U.S. South Atlantic commercial and recreational fisheries. Our estimate of discard mortality for deep-hooked Red Snapper is among the highest published rates for fish in this release condition and demonstrates that deeply hooked Red Snapper will likely die.