As a part of the LOST project, we went out earlier this fall to capture and tag Thornback rays (Raja clavata). The thornback ray is a relatively common ray species and one of several cartilaginous species that inhabit our fjord systems in Norway. The thornback rays spend most of their time at the bottom, and given that our fjord system are prone to hypoxia in these bottom water layers, we have included these beautiful animals to our LOST project where deoxygenation is the primary focus.
The thornback rays were internally tagged with an acoustic transmitter that will help us answer questions regarding their fine-scale movement behaviour, habitat use, seasonal or temporal effects on their movement behaviour, and whether their behaviour is affected by varying levels of oxygen availability.
Check out this video of a tagged thornback ray that has been released and is swimming back to the fjord bottom.
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