Today’s Asbury Park Press has a fascinating story today about a study in which fish tagged with tracking devices were released into the Navesink River as part of a study to understand their wanderings.

From the article, by reporter Kirk Moore:

Dozens of bluefish, striped bass and weakfish implanted with electronic tags last summer surprised scientists by staying in the Navesink River for an average three weeks or longer, showing how important the suburban river remains to marine life, according to preliminary results from those 2006 experiments.

“What amazed us was how long some of these animals stayed in the system,” said John Manderson, a scientist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s James J. Howard Laboratory here. “So even though it’s small, a lot of these fish are using the system quite intensively.”

Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration team captured and released 78 fish after implanting tiny acoustic tags that let them individually track each animal up and down the river. They found most of the fish tended to congregate in specific areas — often deep, cool holes in the river’s midsection — and make excursions up and down the river.

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