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Fishery Bulletin 107(3) 
tates consideration when dealing with anadromous or 
catadromous fishes. 
PSAT deployments in estuarine and coastal waters 
will likely have higher tag-to-human interaction rates 
than those deployed in oceanic waters, and will poten- 
tially lead to greater rates of tag recovery. However, to 
realize these potential benefits, which may be consider- 
able in highly populated regions, the incentive (finan- 
cial, material, or otherwise) for returning a recovered 
tag must be sufficient (Pollock et al., 2001). Historically, 
tag-recovery rates in PSAT studies have been very low. 
However, Kerstetter and Graves (2008) recently re- 
ported recoveries of 4 of 17 PSATs (23.5%) attached to 
sailfish released from pelagic longline operations in the 
Gulf of Mexico, south of Key West, FL, and all recover- 
ies came from the heavily used beaches of southeast 
Florida. Recovery of PSATs can further be aided by the 
use of radio antennae if tags are transmitting 1 ; tags in 
dense cover can also be located by a metal detector at 
close range (<0.5 m: A. Horodysky, personal obs.). Tag 
recovery is beneficial not only because it is possible to 
obtain 100% of the archived data from the PSAT, but 
recovered tags can be refurbished for approximately 
20% of the cost of a new tag. 
A second objective of this study was to assess po- 
tential differences in postrelease survival of striped 
bass caught on live eels rigged with J hooks and circle 
hooks in the winter recreational fishery. Although the 
limited sample size precluded statistical comparisons, 
tags from all eight fish returned data that indicated 
survival. Circle hooks reduce deep-hooking, hook-in- 
duced trauma, and mortality of many fishes (Cooke and 
Suski, 2004; Horodysky and Graves, 2005), including 
that of striped bass (Table 1). Previous research has 
demonstrated a high mortality of striped 
bass deep-hooked with J hooks and addi- 
tional and interactive stress-related mortal- 
ity of larger striped bass caught in warm, 
low-salinity waters (>20°C, <10 ppt) and 
handled in still higher air temperatures 
(>30°C) (Wilde et al., 2000; Lukacovic and 
Uphoff, 2002). Handling exhausted fish in 
warmer air can further raise basal meta- 
bolic rate, exacerbating oxygen demand and 
blood chemistry problems (Gingerich, et al., 
2007) while simultaneously reducing the 
gill surface area because of the physical 
collapse of the gill lamellae and adhesion of 
the gill filaments (Cooke et al., 2002). We 
observed 100% survival of tagged fish, in- 
cluding two animals deeply hooked with J 
hooks, caught in cool, high salinity waters 
(<10°C, >25 ppt), and handled briefly (<2 
minutes) in cool air temperatures (<18°C). 
Although further work is still needed, the 
results of these studies indicate that the 
winter recreational fishery in Virginia may 
not be a significant source of postrelease 
mortality for striped bass and that release 
mortality of this species likely varies tem- 
porally and spatially because of physiologi- 
cal stressors. 
A third objective of this study was to 
gain insights into habitat use by striped 
bass overwintering near the mouth of 
Chesapeake Bay. Net displacements of the 
eight fish over the 30-day tagging period 
were limited, averaging less than 35 nmi 
(64.8 km). We did not use geolocation al- 
gorithms based on light and sea surface 
temperature data to infer horizontal move- 
ments of fish within the 30-day tagging 
period because the mean displacements 
over the 30 days were substantially less 
than the root mean square (RMS) errors 
associated with daily estimates of geolo- 
cation. Under optimal condition, such as 
200 
400 
400 
600 
200 
400 
Fourier frequency 
600 
Figure 5 
Fast Fourier transform periodigrams for depth data from three recov- 
ered Microwave Telemetry X-tags (fish 2, 4, and 8) deployed on eight 
large coastal migrant striped bass ( Morone saxatilis) from January 
through March 2008 and physically recovered. Periods of the main 
spectral peaks found with the raw data and the Hamming window 
are identified with open circles and labeled in hours. 
