Dataset: Adult Black Sea Bass (Centropristis striata) winter survival and lipid accumulation in wild-caught fish in Long Island Sound in Sept of 2022 to Apr of 2023

17 adult specimens were collected by boat off Stonington Borough, CT (41° 20’37.8” N 71° 54’51.4” W) between September 15th and October 10th, 2022 to act as a wild ‘pre-migratory’ baseline (‘fall’, n = 17) and an additional 21 individuals were collected from the same location on April 27^th 2021 to act as a wild “post-migratory” baseline (‘spring’, n = 21). Upon collection, individuals were immediately euthanized with MS-222 and measured for length (TL; 33.7 ± 4.4 cm), body depth (BD; 8 ± 0.9 cm), and wet weight (wW; 532.6 ± 227 g). During dissections, the stomach was removed to calculate a stomachless whole weight to standardize for consumed prey items, and the liver and gonad was then removed, individually weighed (0.01 g) and frozen at -20°C for future lipid extractions. A subsample of dorsally located white muscle tissue was also removed and frozen.

For all adults, we calculated gonadosomatic (GSI; %) and hepatosomatic (HSI; %) indices using stomachless fish mass (wW – stomach mass), to standardize for stomach contents, as {e.g., 100 × [(gonad or liver mass, g) / (stomachless fish mass)].

We quantified gonad, liver, and white muscle, storage lipid, lean-mass, and ash weights of each surviving experimental individual and baseline specimen. Samples were frozen at -50°C for 1 week and remeasured for whole body dry weight (dWb, 0.001 g). Following published protocols (Schultz and Conover 1997, Guo et al. 2021, 2022, Zavell et al. 2023), dried specimens were loaded into preweighed Alundum medium-porosity extraction thimbles and transferred to a custom-designed Soxhlet apparatus, where they were bathed in petroleum ether for 3.5 h to extract all metabolically available lipids. Samples were then dried overnight (60°C) and re-measured, with the change in pre- and post-extraction weights (ΔdW), representing the storage-lipid fraction (dWLipid). Samples were then muffle furnaced for 4 h at 550°C and reweighed with ΔdW, representing the lean-mass fraction (dWLean) and the remaining mass represents the inorganic fraction (dWAsh). 

Organism Identifier (LSID, Life Sciences Identifier)
Centropristis striata, urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:159348