Abstract

Fish ages are an essential component for the assessment of stock status. Age data are used for estimating longevity, cohort tracking, and understanding population dynamics of commercially and recreationally valuable species. Otoliths are the most widely utilized hard part in fish ageing. Traditional ageing methods can be time consuming, requiring sample handling, sectioning, and visually counting the incremental annuli using microscopes. The Southeast Fisheries Science Center collectively receives up to 85,000 hard parts each year. The process of ageing requires a large investment in time and staff resources to provide data for annual stock assessments. The use of advanced technology could increase production ageing if it can maintain comparable ageing accuracy to traditional methods. Currently, scientists from NOAA Fisheries are evaluating the feasibility of using Fourier Transform Near-Infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy to accurately predict fish ages.

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