Abstract

The main goal of the present study is to assess the connectivity between spawning locations and recruitment grounds for commercially important fish species that spawn in marine protected areas in the US Virgin Islands and off the Eastern Puerto Rico shelf. To simulate the transport and dispersal of fish eggs and early larvae from spawning locations we have implemented a very high-resolution unstructured circulation model based on the FVCOM numerical model. This circulation model has been validated in detail by comparing model predictions to CARICOOS buoy data, ADCP data obtained as part of the project, and surface current data from CARICOOS’ high-frequency radar (HFR) systems. A 3D offline particle tracking model embedded in FVCOM has been modified to include active vertical movement parameterized by species-specific larvae characteristics to accurately predict the dispersal of early-stage target species. The main focus of the egg and larvae transport simulations on two commercially important reef fish species: red hind (Epinephelus guttatus) and mutton snapper (Lutjanus analis). The statistical fish larvae data for initializing the transport model was obtained from larval abundance cruise surveys conducted by Southeast Fisheries Science Center (CFMC) in 2019, which provided the vertical distribution of larval abundance in the mixed layer. In this paper we show the results of the egg and larvae transport simulations including visualizations of transport pathways, an analysis of self-recruitment patterns, as well as connectivity matrices between MPA’s and recruitment locations.

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