Effects of Multiple Capture Events on Estimation of Discard Mortality and Number of Releases in Southeastern US Reef Fishes

For many species of marine fish, increased effort and regulations have led to increased numbers of discards over the last several decades.  Recent tagging work on several reef fish species in the southeastern US has found that many tagged individuals are recaptured multiple times.  We examine several questions in relation to this phenomenon.  Do individual fish that are caught and released multiple times differ in their relative discard survival compared to fish that are caught and released once?  Does the time period in between capture events (i.e. ‘recovery time’) influence relative discard survival?  Lastly, how biased are estimates of number of releases that are currently assumed to be independent fish when corrected for non-independence?   We found no negative influence of multiple capture events, either in amount or time in between, on relative discard survival; interestingly, relative discard survival increased with increasing capture events for some species.  Our findings will improve estimates of the number of live and dead releases which are critical inputs for stock assessments of southeastern US reef fishes.