In our ongoing bay scallop restoration efforts in eastern Long Island, NY, United States, we have planted millions of hatchery‐reared juveniles to serve as broodstock when they mature. These plantings have driven the resurgence of larval recruitment, benthic population sizes, and commercial fishery landings over a 12‐year period. In this article, we detail an attempt to track the contribution of our restoration efforts to population rebuilding using planted “skunks,” an uncommon color morph, by looking for increased skunk frequencies in subsequent wild cohorts. Although we saw higher skunk frequencies among large juveniles in natural populations in the first 3 years after extensive skunk plantings, supporting use of uncommon color morphs as a passive tracer, this conclusion was not supported when examined over a 12‐year period, as no strong correlations were seen between skunk frequencies at different life stages (adult broodstock, small and large F1 juveniles, F1 adults) for respective cohorts. Potential reasons for poor correlation between skunk frequencies and restoration efforts include lower than expected production of skunk offspring, dilution of out‐planted contribution to growing natural populations, interannual variability in skunk frequencies that may have obscured the expected skunk signal, and/or differentially higher mortality of skunks at postset and larger juvenile stages. In the latter case, skunks experienced higher overwinter mortality, most likely due to predation, in 9 of 11 years. This led us to suspend skunk plantings after 3 years. Nevertheless, commercial fishermen perceived skunks to be “our” scallops, helping raise the profile of and support for our restoration efforts.

中文翻译：

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尝试使用罕见的海湾扇贝色变体来跟踪恢复工作对人口恢复的贡献

在我们在美国纽约州长岛东部进行的海湾扇贝恢复工作中，我们已经种植了数百万只孵化场孵化的幼鱼，当它们成熟时可以用作亲鱼。这些种植在过去的12年中促使幼体的恢复，底栖种群的规模以及商业性渔业的复活。在本文中，我们通过寻找随后的野生种群中增加的臭鼬频率，详细尝试了利用种植的“臭鼬”（一种不常见的颜色变体）来跟踪恢复工作对人口重建的贡献的尝试。尽管在大规模进行臭鼬种植后的头三年中，我们发现自然种群中大型未成年人的臭鼬频率更高，这支持使用罕见的颜色形态作为被动示踪剂，但是在12年的时间里，这一结论并没有得到支持，因为在各个生命周期的不同生命阶段（成年亲鱼，小型和大型F1幼体，F1成年）的臭鼬频率之间没有发现强相关性。臭鼬频率与恢复工作之间相关性差的潜在原因包括：臭鼬后代的产量低于预期，对自然人口增长的外来贡献稀释，臭鼬频率的年际变化可能掩盖了预期的臭鼬信号和/或差异较大臭鼬在幼年期和大龄阶段的死亡率。在后一种情况下，臭鼬在11年中的9年经历了更高的越冬死亡率，这很可能是由于掠食造成的。这导致我们在3年后暂停了臭鼬种植。不过，商业渔民认为臭鼬是“我们的”扇贝，