offered valuable suggestions and criticisms. Sam- 

 pling was accomplished with the cooperation of Peter 

 B. Ortner and Shailer Cummings (Atlantic Oceano- 

 graphic and Meteorological Laboratory, NOAA). 

 This research was supported by a contract from the 

 Ocean Assessments Division, National Ocean Ser- 

 vices, NOAA, to the Southeast Fisheries Center 

 Beaufort Laboratory, NMFS, as part of an effort to 

 define the food web that supports the survival of lar- 

 val fishes in the northern Gulf of Mexico. 



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Southeast Fisheries Center Beaufort Laboratory 

 National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA 

 Beaufort, NC 28516 



EMPIRICAL USE OF LONGEVITY DATA 

 TO ESTIMATE MORTALITY RATES 



Various investigators have utilized compendia of life 

 history parameters to develop equations for predict- 

 ing values of difficult- to -estimate parameters from 

 easily measured or estimated quantities. For exam- 

 ple, Pauly (1979) developed multiple regressions to 

 predict the natural mortality rate offish from growth 

 parameters and mean water temperature. Ohsumi 

 (1979) developed linear regressions for estimating 

 natural mortality of cetaceans from maximum length 

 or maximum age. In this paper, a general regression 

 equation is developed to predict the total mortality 

 rate of fish, cetacean, and mollusk stocks from the 

 maximum age. 



It seems intuitive that longevity and mortality rate 

 in a species should be inversely related since animals 

 from a population with a high mortality rate would 

 not survive long enough to reach old age. The nature 

 of the relationship between mortality and maximum 

 age is explored below. 



898 



FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 82, NO. 1, 1983. 



