Date of Award:

5-2006

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Biology

Department name when degree awarded

Fisheries Biology

Committee Chair(s)

Todd A Crowl

Committee

Todd A Crowl

Committee

Phaedra Budy

Committee

Karen Mock

Abstract

The June sucker (Chasmistes liorus) is a pelagic feeding sucker endemic to Utah Lake, Utah. It has been listed as an endangered species with the present population being estimated with as few as 300 individuals. Efforts to reinvigorate the population by placing breeding age individuals and augmenting the population with hatchery-reared fish have proved to have had limited success. At this stage there is an imperative to understand the behavioral traits and life history of June sucker to retrieve them from the brink. Previous efforts have been hampered by few individuals and a difficult habitat to study. Utah Lake is large, yet shallow with rough environmental conditions. In this study, methods were developed to address some of these challenges and used to describe the movement of June sucker using radio/acoustic telemetry over four seasonal time-periods. Manual and fixed position monitoring methods were used to collect fish abundance data for all tagged fish. Tagged fish were monitored at the mouth of spawning tributaries to determine the extent of spawning congregations and migrations. Lake-wide fish distributions were monitored using a randomly deployed hydrophone system in a paired sample scheme so that comparisons could be made between limnetic and littoral habitat use. Minimum linear weekly movements were produced using consecutive weekly detections. Data summarized in this study have been important in managing and monitoring wild populations of June sucker in their natural habitat.

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