Temporal activity patterns of dusky grouper Epinephelus marginatus (Lowe, 1834) related to environmental and human factors inside a Mediterranean Marine Protected Area

CALÒ, ANTONIO; JIMÉNEZ-MONTALBÁN, PEDRO; FÉLIX-HACKRADT, FABIANA; CIANCIO, JAVIER; GIACALONE, VINZENZO; PEREÑIGUEZ, JOSE; HERNÁNDEZ-ANDREU, RAMÓN; CARLOS WERNER HACKRADT; BELTRAMINO, LUCAS; ABECASIS, DAVID; GARCÍA-CHARTON, JOSÉ A.; ROJO, IRENE; CUADROS, AMALIA; MOURRE, BAPTISTE; VENERUS, LEONARDO; NOELA SÁNCHEZ CARNERO

Arendal

Conferencia; 5th International Conference on Fish Telemetry; 2019

The dusky grouper (Epinephelus marginatus) is a high-steemed serranid fish having a particular conservation interest due to its ecological importance. It is a widelydistributed, long-lived, rocky-reef top predator that has sedentary habits and slow growth.However, the scientific literature on the activity and movement patterns of E. marginatus is scarce and has some limitations:Although the number of detections was mostly used as a proxy for activity in E. marginatus, therelationship between that variable and real activity budgets remains unclear..In this context, here we present the work done in the framework of the REDEMED and ABHACO2DE projects, whose main goals are (1) to evaluate the suitability of usingeither the number of detections or acceleration data as a proxy of activity, and (2) to investigate activity and fine-scale movement patterns in the dusky grouper.