All About the Bass 2024 - Anna Sturrock (University of Essex)

"All About the Bass" was a one day symposium on 8th July 2024 hosted by the University of Essex showcasing the latest in European sea bass science and providing a forum for scientists, anglers and policymakers to discuss ways that we could work together to improve bass monitoring and management (www.tinyurl.com/BassEvent). #BassConf

Anna's talk: An Eyes and Ears approach to estimating the contribution rates of different bass nurseries to the adult stock

As most mortality in marine fishes occurs during early life stages, quantifying variation in growth and survival among estuaries is critical to performing targeted protection or restoration measures. Here, we sampled newly settled juvenile bass from 19 estuaries along both sides of the English Channel and Portugal in 2022-23 and analysed their otolith (‘earstone’) and eye lens chemistry to build a chemical reference library and test the reliability of this method for identifying fish nursery area. The early results are promising, with significant differences in chemical signatures among estuaries that appear to be driven by variation in water chemistry and local food webs, with some potential influence of sewage pollution. We will now analyze the juvenile growth layers in the adult eyes and ears to estimate the contribution rates of each nursery area to the fishery, and to see whether it is predicted by habitat type/quality, juvenile abundance and/or condition.

Anna's Biography
Dr Anna Sturrock is a Senior Lecturer and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Essex. She primarily uses natural tags in archival structures such as otoliths and eye lenses to understand fish movements and health, generating empirical data to inform sustainable ecosystem management in a changing climate. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh, her Masters at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and her PhD at the University of Southampton and the Centre for the Environmental Fisheries and Aquaculture Science. From 2012 to 2020 she was a researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz, Berkeley, then Davis focused on salmon and water management. Since moving back to the UK in 2020 she has been working her way back up the salinity gradient in projects focused on sea bass, flatfish, tuna, eels, cod and anchovies, particularly using chemical tracers to reconstruct nursery ground contribution rates to the adult stock. She is co-leader of a COST Action Working Group focused on marine connectivity and can be found on the twittersphere as @otolithgirl