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Fishery Bulletin 107(3) 
Figure 3 
Minimum straight line displacements (MSLD) in nautical miles (nmi) of eight 
large coastal migrant striped bass (Morone saxatilis ) caught on recreational 
fishing gear and tagged with Microwave Telemetry X-tags from January through 
March 2008. Arrow bases (circles) indicate location of fish tagging and release, 
arrow tips denote the first point of contact with transmitting tag after release 
from the fish. 
coastal or estuarine waters warmed by unseasonable 
temperatures (~18°C) on 7 February 2008. 
Despite the daily variability in the tracks of indi- 
viduals, repeated-measures linear mixed-effects models 
yielded no significant diel differences in striped bass 
depth or temperature utilization (P>0.05). The best 
fitting model for both depth and temperature data was 
the autoregressive moving average (ARM A) covariance 
structure. 
Fast Fourier transform periodigrams of the three 
recovered tags revealed weak periodicities in vertical 
movements consistent with one cycle per day (i.e., 24 
hours), and weaker behaviors consistent with two and 
three cycles per day (i.e., 12 and 8 hours, respective- 
ly; Fig. 5). All three periodigrams had large spectral 
peaks near zero, a consequence of standardizing the 
depth data by the average depth; main spectral peaks 
follow this initial clustering (Shepard et al., 2006). 
The main spectral peaks were identified both with 
and without the Hamming window, and thus were not 
attributed to artifact. It is unclear if the periodicities 
of approximately 12 hours and 8 hours represent spe- 
cific behavioral cycles or harmonics that result from 
nonsinusoidal behavior (Chatfield, 1996). 
Discussion 
The primary goal of this study was to evaluate the per- 
formance of a new generation of smaller PSATs on estua- 
rine and coastal species in the nearshore environment. 
The larger, older models of PSATs have been deployed 
on coastal elasmobranchs (Grusha, 2005; Conrath and 
Musick, 2008). As comparatively smaller coastal and 
estuarine fishes become candidates for these smaller 
tags, researchers may wish to consider the minimum 
size at which drag and lift forces acting on the PSAT 
impact behavior and survival (Grusha and Patterson, 
2005). From the movements of fish and the lack of 
observed mortalities, we conclude that striped bass of 
~1 m TL length appear to be of sufficient size to carry 
the X-tag. 
At the outset of this study we were concerned with 
the potential for premature release of PSATs because 
of entanglement in physical structure, fish-tag inter- 
actions that would result in premature release or tag 
damage, and the likelihood that tags would effectively 
transmit the archived data from nearshore waters. 
The lack of prematurely released tags in this study 
confirms that fouling or interactions with structure 
