Tag retention and survival of Age-0 Atlantic salmon following surgical implantation with passive integrated transponder tags

We evaluated an alternative to using hypodermic needles to implant passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags in the body cavities of juvenile salmonids. We used surgical techniques to place PIT tags into the body cavities of 3,037 age-0 Atlantic salmon Salmo salar and then held fish under hatchery conditions for 9 months. Tag retention was 99.8% (six fish lost tags), and survival was 94.3% (174 fish died) after controlling for initial mortality (0.7%). A single tagger was able to tag 80–100 fish per hour. Surgically implanting PIT tags into the body cavities of age-0 Atlantic salmon proved to be a viable alternative to using hypodermic needles.