Assessing relative post-release mortality for the transparent goby fishery: Environmental drivers and the utility of vitality metrics

20 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, supporting information S1 Video. Fragment of a video recording where the estimated fish trajectories are shown. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230357.s001 (AVI); S1 R script. Simulations of the survival model. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230357.s002 (R); S2 R script. Survival model. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230357.s003 (R); S3 R script. Vitality model. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230357.s004 (R); S1 Input data. Survival model. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230357.s005 (RDATA); S2 Input data. Vitality model. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230357.s006 (RDATA)The target species (Aphia minuta and Pseudaphya ferreri) of the transparent goby fishery on Mallorca Island (Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean) are currently discarded when the maximum daily catch is exceeded or when the sorting process is unworkable. The mortality suffered by this discarded fraction remains unknown, although it may be important for resource management. Accordingly, the aims of this study were to (1) assess the environmental drivers of the relative post-release survival of the discarded target species and (2) test the correlations between post-release survival and two behavior-related variables (swimming speed and its increase after a stimulus, assessed via video recording). To do so, mortality of the target species from 47 hauls sampled under normal fishing boat operations was monitored when the gear was onboard and after a few hours. At the reference level (an average depth of 25.7 m and temperature of 15.7 ºC), the immediate survival was 99.9% (95% CI: 97.9 to 100%), but the estimated post-release survival decreased to 47.2% (33.8 to 65.8%). Relative post-release mortality doubled when the water temperature increased by 2.8 ºC or when the fishing depth increased up to 32 m. Furthermore, the swimming speed of the target species was significantly correlated with the estimated post-release survival; thus, this vitality metric may offer a promising strategy for more easily estimating post-release mortality in other fisheriesThis research received funding from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Grant Agreement No. 634495 for the Science, Technology, and Society Initiative to Minimize Unwanted Catches in European Fisheries (MINOUW)With the funding support of the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S), of the Spanish Research Agency (AEI