Fish TRACS

Current methods for determining the magnitude of larval dispersal and retention in marine ecosystems lack the precision that is necessary to directly identify the exact location of origin of recruits. Providing an efficient method for directly estimating larval dispersal parameters has profound implications for marine ecology and fishery management. We propose the integration of mark/recapture data from novel intergenerational genetic tagging, intensive demographic field surveys, and oceanographic data and modeling to quantify the amount of larval retention and patterns of dispersal for a common and important marine fish.