Richard S. McBride

Life History of Hickory Shad in the St. Johns River, Florida

Abstract Hickory shad Alosa mediocris spawn in rivers from Maryland to Florida, but little research has been published regarding their life history. We collected hickory shad in the St. Johns River, Florida, during five consecutive spawning years from 2000 to 2005. Hickory shad migrated upstream by December and remained in the river and its tributaries until March. Females were larger than males and accounted for 17.7% of the adults collected. All but one female examined were mature and contained yolked oocytes. No females had hydrated oocytes, but four had fresh postovulatory follicles (POFs < 24 h old), indicating a batch spawning pattern. Females with fresh POFs were collected from Shad Alley and the Wekiva and Econlockhatchee rivers, but otherwise the spawning grounds could not be delineated. Fish constituted over 97% of the diet by weight and were found in 11.5% of the stomachs examined. Scale and otolith ages produced the same age range, from 1 to 7 years. A test of symmetry did not detect systemati...

Otolith Age Validation and Growth Estimation from Oxytetracycline-Marked and Recaptured American Shad

Abstract This study validated a whole-otolith aging method using known-age American shad Alosa sapidissima from the Delaware River system. Although scale ages are commonly used in autecological and assessment studies of American shad, scale ages from the same fish could not be validated. New data reported here used known-aged otoliths and scales available from shad marked by oxytetracycline as larvae in a hatchery and recaptured as adults on or near their spawning ground. A subset of whole otoliths were examined and annuli—defined as a pair of translucent and opaque bands—were counted using males and females ranging in age from 3 to 9xa0years. The reading and interpretation of annuli by the more experienced reader were accurate with respect to the known age, whether measured as the percent agreement (PA = 80%) or Changs coefficient of variation (CV = 3.11). The use of otoliths provided more accurate results than scales obtained from the same fish (PA = 46%; CV = 7.84). A second reader, who had no previous ...

Changes in size and age at maturity of the northern stock of Tilefish (Lopholatilus chamaeleonticeps) after a period of overfishing

The modern fishery for Tilefish (Lopholatilus chamaeleonticeps) developed during the 1970s, offshore of southern New England, in the western North Atlantic Ocean. The population quickly became over exploited, with documented declines in catch rates and changes in demographic traits. In an earlier study, median size at maturity (L50) of males declined from 62.6 to 38.6 cm fork length (FL) and median age at maturity (A50) of males declined from 7.1 to 4.6 years between 1978 and 1982. As part of a cooperative research effort to improve the data-limited Tilefish assessment, we updated maturity parameter estimates through the use of an otolith aging method and macroscopic and microscopic evaluations of gonads. The vital rates for this species have continued to change, particularly for males. By 2008, male L50 and A50 had largely rebounded, to 54.1 cm FL and 5.9 years. Changes in female reproductive schedules were less variable among years, but the smallest L50 and youngest A50 were recorded in 2008. Tilefish are dimorphic, where the largest fish are nmale, and male spawning success is postulated to be socially mediated. These traits may explain the initial rapid decline and the subsequent rebound in male L50 and A50 and less dramatic effects on females. Other factors that likely contribute to the dynamics of maturity parameter estimates are the relatively short period of overfishing and the amount of time since efforts to rebuild this fishery began, as measured in numbers of generations. This study also confirms the gonochoristic sexual pattern of the northern stock, and it reveals evidence of age truncation and relatively high proportions of immature Tilefish in the recent catch.

Is Cating's Method of Transverse Groove Counts to Annuli Applicable for all Stocks of American Shad?

Abstract A scale aging method was reported by Cating in 1953 for American shad Alosa sapidissima in the Hudson River and subsequently validated by recapturing fish marked and released in the Connecticut River. However, American shad spawn in all major rivers from Canada to Florida and their scales record growth events occurring in three distinct biogeographic provinces. Thus, a single scale aging method may not be applicable across the latitudinal range of this species. To address this concern, scales from American shad from one southern river (the St. Johns), three Middle Atlantic rivers (the Delaware, Hudson, and Connecticut), and one northern river (the Merrimack) were examined. Scales were cleaned, impressed in acetate, and analyzed by the same reader using a digital imaging system. The transverse grooves, the key morphological character used in Catings method, were counted to the distal edge of the freshwater zone and the first three annuli. In most instances, these groove frequencies were statistic...

Importance of Resident and Seasonally Transient Prey to Largemouth Bass in the St. Johns River, Florida

AbstractWe examined seasonal dynamics of prey availability and diets of Largemouth Bass Micropterus salmoides in the St. Johns River, Florida. The four most common prey species were Threadfin Shad Dorosoma petenense, Bay Anchovy Anchoa mitchilli, Atlantic Croaker Micropogonias undulatus, and Atlantic Menhaden Brevoortia tyrannus. The number of prey found in Largemouth Bass varied significantly by month (year-round) and predator size (“small,” 432xa0mm TL, n = 114). Atlantic Menhaden were most energetically beneficial to predators when available. Of the four most common prey species collected in trawls, only menhaden trawl catch was positively correlated with its appearance in bass diets. Menhaden were eaten by bass of all sizes, but were found only from September through November. Largemouth Bass did not feed heavily on juvenile anadromous shads Alosa spp. during their autumn migration, but this likely reflected low abundance of these clupeid ...

Longitudinal Length Back-Calculations from Otoliths and Scales Differ Systematically in Haddock

Abstract Parallel macrostructure analysis of otoliths versus scales was conducted on Georges Bank Haddock Melanogrammus aeglefinus sampled in spring 2011 to test whether annuli widths of both structures yield comparable estimates of back-calculated length at age. While generally similar in number, scale and otolith annuli were found to differ systematically in their relative widths, mainly because initial annuli are deposited closer to the origin in scales than in otoliths. Accounting for the delayed onset of scale versus otolith formation did not remove the systematic bias. To make both structures comparable, we developed an age-independent correction approach that can adjust cumulative relative annuli widths (RAWs) of Haddock scales to otolith RAWs by the quadratic formula log e (RAW oto ) = 0.7244·log e (RAW scale ) + 0.0751·log e (RAW scale )2. Our study comprises a necessary step towards extracting and comparing longitudinal growth data over the entire time series of archived Haddock scales (1931–199...

Genetically determined population structure of hogfish (Labridae: Lachnolaimus maximus) in the southeastern United States

1 Fish and Wildlife Research Institute Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission 100 Eighth Avenue SE St. Petersburg, Florida 33701 2 Population Biology Branch Fisheries and Ecosystems Monitoring Division Northeast Fisheries Science Center National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA 166 Water Street Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543 3 Florida Sea Grant University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Extension 1303 17th Street West Palmetto, Florida 34221

Reproduction, first-year growth, and expansion of spawning and nursery grounds of black sea bass (Centropristis striata) into a warming Gulf of Maine

The views and opinions expressed or implied in this article are those of the author (or authors) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA. Abstract—The black sea bass (Centropristis striata) is extending its range northward, into a warming Gulf of Maine. Here, we plot the geographic distribution of specific life stages to examine whether spawning and settlement, and therefore productivity, are extending northward. In order to align these life stages with the correct sampling season, we first resolve confusion about the spawning seasonality of this species, by collecting age-0 individuals from coastal waters of southeastern Massachusetts (Buzzards Bay and Nantucket Sound) and aging them by using daily otolith microincrements. Wild-caught age-0 fish (n=381), ranged in size from 32 to 88 mm total length (mean: 53 mm [standard deviation (SD) 11]), and in age from 50 to 129 d old (84 d [SD 16]). They hatched from May 2 to July 21 (June 6 [SD 14 d]), and grew at linear rates from 0.32 to 1.22 mm/d (0.65 mm/d [SD 0.15]). The literature and two 40-year trawl surveys confirm that black sea bass have spawned in Buzzards Bay and Nantucket Sound since the 1880s. Farther north, in the southern Gulf of Maine, spawning has likely occurred in the last 15 years. Settlement has increased about 1°N latitude over the recent 4 decades in association with warming sea temperatures in the southern Gulf of Maine. The black sea bass (Centropristis striata) is an important fishery species in temperate and subtropical latitudes of the western North Atlantic Ocean (Musick and Mercer, 1977; Hood et al., 1994; NEFSC1) and is the only serranid that spawns north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina (Kendall, 1972). The northernmost stock, subject of this study, has been historically distributed in temperate waters from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod, Massachusetts (Roy et al., 2012; McCartney et al., 2013; McBride, 2014), but in recent years its range has been extending northward into the colder Gulf of Maine (KleinMacPhee, 2002; Miller et al., 2016). Coastal warming along the U.S. northeast coast is accompanied by the shifting distributions for many marine species (Nye et al., 2009; Per-