Cape Breton Highlands National Park salmon tracking

This is the OBIS extraction of the Ocean Tracking Network and Dalhousie University (DAL) Cape Breton Highlands National Park salmon tracking, consisting of the release tagging metadata, i.e. the location and date when the tagged animal was released, and summarized detection events of tagged individuals.
If readers are interested in the source dataset they may also inquire with the project PIs as listed here or on the OTN web site (https://members.oceantrack.org/project?ccode=V2LCBHNP).
Abstract:Healthy, sustainable Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) stocks are important economically, ecologically, and culturally to Canada. However, many populations have been severely decreasing since the 1980s, leading to an endangered listing for many populations by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). This is particularly evident in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where many rivers are classified as endangered. Parks Canada has been monitoring the adult salmon population on Clyburn Brook in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park for over 30 years and has documented a steep decline by over 95% since 1991. We will collaborate with Parks Canada to examine the temporal pattern of this decline and whether it matches that in other rivers from the region. Specifically, the aim of this research is to quantify the efficacy of smolt-to-adult supplementation in the Clyburn River, where salmon have collapsed to near local extirpation. Over the last few years, smolt-to-adult supplementation has been used as an emergency recovery strategy, where wild juvenile salmon from the Clyburn are transported to Dalhousie University where they are grown to adults. The adults are then returned to the river. However, no formal assessment of the survival, behaviour and reproductive effort of these salmon has been conducted. Using acoustic telemetry we will monitor the behaviour and survivorship of the supplemented salmon, and compare their behaviour to that of wild individuals from another local river, Cheticamp. This assessment will allow us to quantify the movement behaviours both within river and at sea, and the phenology of spawning. Ultimately, we will use the data that we collect from these studies to develop models that examine the degree to natural behaviour and survivorship that supplemented salmon exhibit relative to wild counterparts. These issues are of paramount importance to Parks Canada, as well as other stakeholders like Mi'kmaq conservation groups, local angling groups, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Atlantic Salmon Federation and others, especially since the Species at Risk Act stipulates that recovery strategies must be developed and employed.