A novel electronarcosis method to anaesthetize adult sturgeon in the river during surgical implantation of acoustic tags

Abstract

Migration and behavioral studies conducted on large fish species often imply electronarcosis and tagging activities. Even if individuals are anaesthetized, tagging operations require considerable handling efforts and, moreover, the likelihood of inducing stress, which usually affects the individual’s fitness, or even injuries, is proportional to body size. To decrease stress and the likelihood of injuries to large fishes during tagging operations as much as possible, it was developed a novel system that involves an electronarcosis device coupled with a handling tube. This system was designed and tested in 2009 by the DDNI and had as a result a significantly decreases of the time required for conducting the tagging operation for more than 50 adult sturgeons of different species (sterlet, stellate sturgeon, beluga sturgeon and Russian sturgeon).

Keywords

• electronarcosis operating tube
• large fish tagging
• sturgeon