Influence of Dissolved Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide on Swimming Performance of Largemouth Bass and Coho Salmon

Abstract

The final swimming speed of juvenile largemouth bass, Micropterus salmoides (Lacépède), was reduced markedly at oxygen concentrations below 5 or 6 mg/liter in tests at 25 C in a tubular chamber in which the velocity of water was increased gradually, at 10-min intervals, until the fish were forced by the current permanently against a screen. At levels above 6 mg/liter, the final swimming speed was virtually independent of the oxygen concentration. The performance of bass that had been acclimated overnight to elevated carbon dioxide levels was not materially affected by the highest tested concentrations of free carbon dioxide, averaging 48 mg/liter, at any tested level of dissolved oxygen.For juvenile coho salmon, Oncorhynchus kisutch (Walbaum), at temperatures near 20 C and carbon dioxide concentrations near 2 mg/liter, any considerable reduction of the oxygen concentration from about 9 mg/liter, the air-saturation level, resulted in some reduction of the final swimming speed. The performance of the salmon was impaired much more markedly than was that of the bass by the same reduction of the oxygen concentration. At oxygen concentrations near and above the air-saturation level, high concentrations of free carbon dioxide averaging 18 and 61 mg/liter had a depressing effect on the final swimming speed of coho salmon even after overnight acclimation. However, this effect decreased at reduced oxygen concentrations. No measurable effect of free carbon dioxide concentrations near 61 mg/liter was evident at 2 mg/liter dissolved oxygen, and concentrations near 18 mg/liter had little or no effect even at moderately reduced dissolved oxygen levels after overnight acclimation of the salmon to these carbon dioxide concentrations.