Prey capture kinematics of wild and hatchery juvenile common snook Centropomus undecimalis

Abstract

Common snook Centropomus undecimalis is an important estuarine-dependent predatory fish species. In Florida, the decline of wild stocks, due mainly to fishing pressure and loss of habitat, has led to increasingly restrictive management actions in the last 50 years. This has also promoted its culture for stock enhancement as one of many management actions. Stocking efforts indicate that survival of snook fingerlings can be poor and improvements could be achieved through prerelease conditioning. In this study we compared prey capture kinematics between naïve hatchery juvenile snook and wild conspecifics. Capture behavior, quantified with high-speed cameras, identified specific differences in prey capture of hatchery and wild snook. Naïve juvenile hatchery snook exposed to live prey made fewer attempts to feed, had longer delays in the time to strike, exhibited higher strike velocities and engulfed prey earlier in the gape cycle, and had less overall feeding success compared to wild fish. However, experience with repeated live prey feeding events quickly improved hatchery snook feeding success, similar to wild fish. Therefore, prerelease training via exposure to live prey could improve feeding performance and overall fate of snook released into the wild.