COVID-19 reduced recreational fishing effort during the black bass spawning season, resulting in increases in black bass reproductive success and annual recruitment

In Opinicon Lake, Ontario during two non-pandemic years (2019 and 2022) the hook-wounding rates from recreational angling observed among nesting male largemouth bass Micropterus salmoides (LMB), and nesting male smallmouth bass Micropterus dolomieu (SMB), were quite high, but typical of those observed in the lake over the last 20 years of monitoring. That level of illegal, preseason angling resulted in very low percentages of both LMB and SMB nesting males being successful at raising their broods to independence, rates comparable to those observed for this lake in previous years. In 2020 and 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, however, access to fishing in Ontario was severely limited during the bass spawning season, which serendipitously provided a natural “whole-lake bass spawning sanctuary” to study. Not surprisingly, the hook-wounding rates for nesting male LMB and SMB in Opinicon Lake were the lowest rates ever observed over the last 30 + years. Concomitantly, the percentage of nesting male LMB and SMB that were successful at raising their broods to independence was approximately 3–4 times greater than that in the non-COVID years. Not unexpectedly, those increases in nesting success translated to similar increases in LMB and SMB reproductive success (production of post parental care, independent fry). More importantly, those increases further resulted in large increases in the annual recruitment of both LMB and SMB. This unanticipated COVID-driven experiment revealed that using bass spawning sanctuaries would be more efficient than closed seasons as a management strategy to conserve levels of black bass annual recruitment.

The 3rd International conference on Fisheries and Marine Sciences, Surabaya, Indonesia, 10 September 2020

This proceedings contains 96 papers on ocean biodiversity;breeding, reproduction, feeding and diseases of aquacultured fish and shellfish;water quality;fishery management, seafood preservation and quality;aquaculture and fishery economics and the impact of COVID-19 on aquaculture and fishery production.

Aquaculture: an introductory text

This 4th edition covers issues associated with sustainable aquaculture development, culture systems, hatchery methods, nutrition and feeding of aquaculture species, reproductive strategies, harvesting, and many other topics. While its main focus is on the culture of fish, molluscs and crustaceans for food, the book also covers other forms of aquaculture, such as the production of seaweeds, recreational fish and ornamental species, as well as live foods, such as algae and rotifers that are used to feed larval shrimp and marine fish. Thoroughly updated and revised, this essential textbook now includes increased coverage of open-ocean cage culture and sea lice issues with salmon culture, coverage of the significant progress made in nutrition, including the move away from fishmeal as protein and fish oil as lipids in feed, information on biofloc technology uses, predictive impacts of climate change, probiotics, and the impact of COVID-19 on the aquaculture community, and updated aquaculture production statistics and lists of approved anaesthetics. Aquaculture remains one of the most rapidly growing agricultural disciplines, and this book remains an essential resource for all students of aquaculture and related disciplines.