Selected Biocharacteristics of Hatchery-Reared Striped Bass Captured in New York Ocean Waters

Millions of hatchery-reared striped bass Morone saxatilis have been stocked into the Hudson River since 1983 and into the Chesapeake Bay since 1985; these annual programs continue indefinitely. Despite the magnitude of these plantings, little attention has been paid to whether or not these hatchery-reared fish display the migratory behavior or morphological characteristics of their wild counterparts. Most of these fish were marked with coded wire tags. To examine selected biocharacteristics of hatchery-reared striped bass in the wild, we used coded wire tag detectors to identify hatchery-reared fish among striped bass captured during autumn in 1991 and 1992 in haul seines near Montauk, New York. More than 1,500 striped bass were scanned for coded wire tags each year; hatchery-reared fish composed about 3.5% of the striped bass catch in 1991 and 2.5% 1 year later. Although only about twice as many marked striped bass were stocked in Chesapeake Bay as in the Hudson River, the recapture ratio of Chesapeake Bay to Hudson River fish was 62: 1 in 1991 and 37:2 in 1992; these differences probably resulted from differences in relative survival or migratory behavior. Hatchery-reared striped bass from Chesapeake Bay showed significant (P < 0.05) differences from wild fish in 14 of 18 morphometric dimensions and in the proportion of fish with asymmetric pectoral fin ray counts, but not in the magnitude of asymmetrical fin ray counts or in condition. Hatchery-reared striped bass also displayed a pronounced increase in the incidence of broken stripedness, which may be related to the artificial environments in which they had been raised. We believe that the continued use of hatchery-reared striped bass requires additional monitoring to determine whether or not they are inferior to wild fish in such key characteristics as migratory behavior or homing fidelity.