The nursery stages of mussel aquaculture are highly inefficient with most juvenile mussels being lost within the first few months after seeding, although the precise timing of losses is largely unknown. One possibility is that many juveniles are lost at seeding because they are either impaired or killed by the process of transporting juveniles from collection sites to coastal nursery farms, or because they detach and move away from aquaculture substrata at, or soon after deployment, via secondary settlement behaviour. Three laboratory experiments were used to assess detachment of juvenile mussels from aquaculture substrates following periods of emersion for two batches of wild juveniles undergoing actual transport and one batch of hatchery-reared juveniles during simulated transport periods. The percentage of juveniles retained on their substrates (i.e., not detaching) after a two-minute immersion in seawater and the percentage of dead juveniles were quantified, as was the size of the mussels that were retained on, or detached from, their substrates. Detachment occurred in all experiments (16.9–53.8%) and was greater when the average size of the mussels was small (0.75 ± 0.01 mm). Across all the experiments, larger juvenile mussels were retained in greater numbers with mussels less than 1.75 mm in shell length having a greater propensity to detach from their substrates upon immersion. Very few mussels were dead at the end of the experiments and large proportions of mussels reattached in the aquaria, when given the opportunity. Together, the results of this study indicate that detachment of juvenile mussels is size-specific and driven by secondary settlement behaviour occurring upon or soon after (< 2 mins) immersion. New nursery techniques are required to grow small juvenile mussels to a size beyond which their migratory secondary settlement behaviour is reduced, so that they are less likely to detach upon or soon after immersion while seeding out to farm sites.

贻贝水产养殖的育苗阶段效率很低，大多数幼体贻贝在播种后的头几个月内损失了很多，尽管损失的确切时间尚不清楚。一种可能性是，许多幼鱼在播种时会流失，原因是它们被从收集地点运到沿海苗圃场的过程损害或杀死，或者是因为它们在部署时或部署后不久通过次级从水产养殖基质中分离并移开。解决行为。在出苗期之后，使用了三个实验室实验来评估贻贝从水产养殖基质中的分离，其中有两批正在实际运输中的野生少年和一批在孵化场饲养的孵化中的少年。浸泡在海水中两分钟后，幼鱼保留在其底物上（即未分离）的百分率和死幼体的百分比得以定量，贝类在其底物上或从其上分离的贻贝的大小也得以量化。在所有实验中均发生分离（16.9–53.8％），当贻贝的平均尺寸较小（0.75±0.01 mm）时，分离更严重。在所有实验中，较大的幼贻贝被保留的数量更多，而贻贝的壳长小于1.75 mm，且浸入水中时更有可能从其基质上脱离。在实验结束时，几乎没有贻贝死亡，只要有机会，大部分贻贝会重新附着在水族箱中。一起，这项研究的结果表明，幼贻贝的分离是特定大小的，并且受浸泡（<2分钟）时或浸泡后不久的次生沉降行为的驱动。需要新的育苗技术，以将小型贻贝养殖到一定尺寸，以减少其迁徙次级定居行为，从而使它们在播种到农场现场时浸入水中或浸入后不久脱落的可能性较小。