Vertical and horizontal movements of bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) in southeastern Taiwan

Abstract

To learn about the movement patterns of bigeye tuna in eastern Taiwan, pop-up satellite archival tags were attached on five tuna similar to 55 kg and prematurely detached and popped-up after 32 to 132 days-at-liberty. Two tags were physically recovered and provided fine-scale data archiving the full 47 and 132 days-at-liberty. The deepest descent recorded was 1,292 m and the coldest temperature visited 2.7 degrees C. During daytime, the fish spent the majority of time above 400 m at temperatures from similar to 10 - 25 degrees C and at nighttime; residency was largely confined to the mixed-layer from the surface to similar to 100 m. Vertical movements traversing through the thermocline during the daytime are based on physiological constraints and/or rapid directional changes conducive for optimal search strategies that increases the chances of prey encounters. Bigeye tuna appear to follow the diel vertical movements of prey organisms comprising the deep sound scattering layer to exploit them as a resource.