Abstract

Little peer-reviewed published research exists on life history for Caribbean deepwater snapper species (queen, blackfin, cardinal, wenchman, vermilion, silk), yet these species combined support the most important fishery throughout much of the US Caribbean. Starting in 2013, we have worked collaboratively with local fishers to fill in these critical gaps for all of these species. We continue to try and leverage our expertise, efforts, and preliminary collections to obtain federal funding to support this extensive work. Blackfin snapper is a medium-sized snapper species and occurs in the western Atlantic from waters of North Carolina in the Southeastern U.S., Bermuda, Gulf of Mexico, throughout the Caribbean and as far south as northeastern Brazil. Our research objectives are: 1) Investigate age, growth, and mortality of blackfin snapper across the US Caribbean Island-based management platforms; 2) Document reproductive biology for blackfin snapper, including size- and age-at-sexual maturity, reproductive seasonality, and reproductive potential/output. To-date, we have collected and processed for life history research 713 blackfin snapper samples across the U.S. Caribbean from fisheries-dependent (FD) and -independent (FI) sources ranging in size from 35 - 527 mm FL. We have estimated ages for 200 of the samples. Ages range from 0-47 y, expanding longevity for this species by 20 y. A first step in our efforts was to establish a radiocarbon chronology for the northern Caribbean, then we validated age estimates for 10 blackfin snapper, including the one that was 47 y. Our preliminary findings on blackfin snapper highlight that the current understanding of this species age and growth parameters derived mainly from fish collected the southeastern U.S. do not accurately reflect the U.S. Caribbean population.

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