Long-term residence of red snapper on artificial reefs in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico

Red snapper Lutjanus campechanus (N = 54) were tagged and tracked on 12 artificial reefs in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. Fish were surgically implanted with ultrasonic transmitters and monitored with Vemco remote receivers and Sonotronics surface receivers from August 2000 to July 2004. Four fish were manually tracked from the surface overnight, and their positions were recorded every hour for either 9 or 16 h. The total length of fish tagged was 589 +/- 14 mm (mean +/- SE). The number of detections by the remote receivers was 290,340 +/- 44,696. By the end of this study, 5 fish were still being tracked, 8 fish had been lost immediately after tagging, 15 fish had been caught by fishers, and 26 fish had been lost after extended tracking. Red snapper were resident on artificial reefs for 218 +/- 28 d, and residence time ranged from 1 to 595 d. We estimated that most (67%) of the tagged red snapper showed long-term residence (117-595 d), 13% were resident for 8-91 d, and 20% left the tagging site soon after release (< 4 d). Fish were resident on the same artificial reef over all seasons (winter, spring, summer, and fall), and no seasonal changes in proximity to the reef were detected. Red snapper left the receiver range (1.6 km) for short time periods; for example, fish 25 left the reef 285 times for 1-4 h over a 335-d period. However, all fish spent most of their time (98%) within the receiver range. We detected diet changes in proximity to the reefs (N = 8), but patterns varied. In this study, red snapper showed high site fidelity over long time periods, which suggested that artificial reefs provided suitable habitat for red snapper in the northeastern Gulf Of Mexico.