Spawning ripe black sea bass (BSB) were collected on May 20th, 2022 via hook and line angling in Long Island Sound off Stonington Borough, CT (41.3359°N, 71.9059°W) and brought to the University of Connecticut seawater laboratory on the Avery Point campus (Groton, CT) for future strip-spawning.

Experimental Design:

Our experiment assessed the CO2 sensitivity of embryos and early life stages of BSB at a single static temperature (22°C) and three pCO2 conditions (~400, ~2200, ~4200 µatm). On May 23rd, 2022, we strip-spawned wild, running-ripe BSB ((Nfemale/male = 4/3) to produce viable embryos. Upon water-hardening a 5 ml sample of eggs was randomly allocated to a replicate 19-l rearing container held within one of nine recirculating systems within the Baumann labs automated larval rearing system (ALFiRiS).

For this experiment, three ALFiRiS systems were assigned each pCO2 treatment and received eight individual replicates. Replicate containers consisted of 750 ml plastic cups with 100 µm mesh bottoms, which were floated in larger 19-l containers. 19-l containers were fitted with four 150 µm mesh screens to allow for water transfer and each 750 ml rearing container received a gravity-fed flow of treatment water to maintain embryos in the water column (4-l hour-1). For the ambient and elevated treatments each replicate ALFiRiS tank received eight 750 ml rearing containers, while two of the extreme treatments received eight rearing containers the other received 16. Actual pCO2 values were measured by taking 300 ml filtered water samples from each tank every nine days for endpoint titrations. Tank temperature, pH, and total alkalinity values were used to calculate pCO2 using CO2SYS (V2.3, Lewis and Wallace 2021; available at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/ocean-carbon-acidification-data-system/oceans/CO2SYS/co2rprt.html). Throughout the experiment pH was recorded once an hour and temperature were recorded every five minutes. Additionally, ammonia (ppm) was measured once a week while salinity was measured every nine days (psu).

At 22°C hatching occurred approximately 48 hours post fertilization (hpf). Immediately, following hatch four of the eight (or eight of sixteen for one tank) replicates were euthanized with an overdose of MS-222 and immediately fixed in cold (2-4°C) paraformaldehyde (PFA) in phosphate buffered saline (PBS). The remaining replicates were reared until 10 dph, upon which they were euthanized and fixed as previously described. For the first two dph larvae were fed greenwater (RGComplete, Reed Mariculture, Campbell CA, USA) ad libitum 3× a day. Starting on 1 dph larvae were fed live L-type rotifers (Reed Mariculture, Campbell CA, USA) ad libitum 3× a day.

Response Traits
* See "Related Datasets" section for access to morphometric data.

We estimated percent hatch at the number of hatched larvae at 0 days post hatch (dph) divided by the sum of hatched larvae and unhatched embryos × 100. Since replicate containers which were reared to 10 dph were not sampled at 0 dph to determine percent hatch, the number of embryos was estimated as the average number of embryos from the nine extra sample allocations which was then multiplied by the ALFiRiS system average hatching success to estimate total larvae at 0 dph. Subsequently, percent survival was the number of surviving larvae at 10 dph divided by the estimated number of larvae at 0 dph × 100.

At both 0 and 10 dph we individually photographed each larvae using calibrated images (Nikon SMZ1000, Image-Pro-Premier V.9.3.3) to measure individual for total length (TL; mm) and body depth (BD; mm). 10 dph larvae were also measured for notochord length (NL; mm), eye diameter (ED; mm), and mandible length (ML; mm).

Length growth rates (GR, mm d-1) were calculated by dividing the difference between replicate TL means at 0 and 10 dph by 10.

Organism Identifier (LSID, Life Sciences Identifier)
Centropristis striata, urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:159348

927786_v1_bsb_survival_growth.csv