Aquaculture and Fisheries Commons^™

The Ecology Of Antibiotic Resistance: Sources And Persistence Of Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci And Antibiotic Resistant Genes In Aquatic Environments, Suzanne M. Young

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The growing crisis of antibiotic resistance is a major threat to ecosystems and human health. Infections caused by known and emerging antibiotic resistant pathogens are on the rise globally, with approximately 700,000 deaths per year caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria (1). In the United States, infections from antibiotic resistant bacteria cause more than 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths (2). Antibiotic resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes are released into aquatic ecosystems through hospital waste, residential sewer lines and animal agricultural waste streams. Animal agriculture accounts for approximately 70% of antibiotic use in the United States (3). In agricultural ecosystems, …

Whiting Events Off Southwest Florida: Remote Sensing And Field Observations, Jacqueline Long

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Whiting” is a term used to describe a sharply defined patch of water that contains high levels of suspended, fine-grained calcium carbonate (CaCO₃). These features are named for their bright (at times white) appearance when compared to surrounding waters, and have been found to occur globally, persisting for multiple consecutive days. Although whitings have been widely studied using chemical, biological, geological, and physical techniques, there has been little effort to document their spatio-temporal distributions in a systematic way, not to mention the lack of consensus on what generates whitings and allows them to persist for days to weeks …

The Development Of A Fluorescence-Based Reverse Flow Injection Analysis (Rfia) Method For Quantifying Ammonium At Nanomolar Concentrations In Oligotrophic Seawater, William Abbott

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis was to adopt a reverse flow injection analysis (rFIA) technique to the fluorometric analysis of the reaction o-phthaldialdehyde (OPA) with ammonium, allowing accurate measurements of ammonium concentrations lower than the detection limit of the widely used indophenol blue (IPB) colorimetric method while accounting for the background fluorescence of seawater. Ammonium is considered an essential nutrient for primary productivity, especially in the nutrient depleted surface ocean where as the most reduced form of dissolved inorganic nitrogen, it is readily assimilated via metabolic pathways. Challenges in the quantification of ammonium require more sensitive analytical techniques for …

Use Of A Towed Camera System For Estimating Reef Fish Populations Densities On The West Florida Shelf, Sarah Elizabeth Grasty

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Reef fish species tend to reside over high relief habitat which makes them difficult to sample with traditional gears such as nets and trawls. Therefore, implementing and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of new approaches which incorporate acoustic and optical methods has become a priority for reef fish stock assessment. Beginning in June of 2013, a towed camera system known as the Camera-Based Assessment Survey System (C-BASS) has been used to visualize over 500 kilometers of transect and record more than 80 hours of video over several habitats in the Gulf of Mexico. Surveys have been completed on the West …

Relative Survival Of Gags Mycteroperca Microlepis Released Within A Recreational Hook-And-Line Fishery: Application Of The Cox Regression Model To Control For Heterogeneity In A Large-Scale Mark-Recapture Study, Beverly J. Sauls

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objectives of this study were to measure injuries and impairments directly observed from gags Mycteroperca microlepis caught and released within a large-scale recreational fishery, develop methods that may be used to rapidly assess the condition of reef fish discards, and estimate the total portion of discards in the fishery that suffer latent mortality. Fishery observers were placed on for-hire charter and headboat vessels operating in the Gulf of Mexico from June 2009 through December 2012 to directly observe reef fishes as they were caught by recreational anglers fishing with hook-and-line gear. Fish that were not retained by anglers were …

Fishermen, Politics, And Participation: An Ethnographic Examination Of Commercial Fisheries Management In St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, Cynthia Grace-Mccaskey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Currently, there is widespread debate regarding the overall status of the world's fisheries, with some researchers projecting their total collapse in only a few decades, and others concluding the situation is not quite as bleak. Additional debates include what strategies should be used to manage fisheries at various scales, and further research is needed to determine which strategies are most appropriate for use in particular situations and locales, as context is critical.

Recently, prominent common pool resources scholars have expressed the need for ethnographic approaches to studying resource management institutions in order to move beyond the current focus of simply …

Relative Abundance And Spatial Distribution Of Lepomid Sunfishes In The Peace River, Justin Henry Heller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines spatially continuous sampling data in order to investigate patterns of abundance and distribution of three recreationally important sunfish species (bluegill, redear, and spotted sunfish) along the main-stem of the Peace River, a large softwater river located in southwest Florida. A total of 467 electrofishing transects were sampled biannually from spring 2008 to spring 2010. Sampling sites ranged from the headwaters of the Peace River in Polk County, FL to the oligohaline waters located in Charlotte County, FL. All fish were collected with boat mounted electrofishing gear, and aquatic habitat and physiochemical water quality measurements were recorded at …