448 



Fishery Bulletin 94(3). 1996 



—I I I L_ 



Age 5 



5 6 4 " 



MM 



5 2 



JFMAMJJASOND JFMAMJJASOND 



Month 



Figure 4 



Monthly median percent marginal increment and interquartile range for bonefish otoliths for individual 

 bonefish. Albula vulpes, age classes 4—9. 



and opaque zones on otolith sections distal to the OTC 

 mark to suggest that otolith growth had been funda- 

 mentally altered. 



Our findings suggest that scales may not be suit- 

 able for ageing bonefish older than 6-9 years, the 

 point at which our length-at-age data reached an 

 asymptote. Scale-derived estimates of bonefish lon- 

 gevity by Bruger (1974) are lower than our otolith- 

 derived estimate of 19 years. The oldest fish Bruger 

 reported was estimated to be 12 years old, but he 

 presented age-at-length data for only 140 bonefish 



ages 1-9. The number offish in Bruger's sample de- 

 clined quickly after age 6, and he apparently found 

 only one fish older than age 9. In contrast, we found 

 bonefish ages 3-9 to be abundant, and small num- 

 bers offish were present in each age class from ages 

 10 to 19 yr (Fig. 6). The truncated age structure of 

 Bruger's sample is probably an artifact of his ageing 

 technique, but because we did not directly compare 

 scale-derived and otolith-derived ages, we cannot rule 

 out the possibility that Bruger's sample contained 

 only one fish older than age 9. 



