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Fishery Bulletin 108(4) 
in an absence of immature individuals for all, but one 
species. However, some individuals of most species were 
sampled in their first or second year indicating that 
these species mature at a very early age. The fact that 
full recruitment to the gear occurred at age 2 for S. 
nematophorus and at age 3 for A. virescens, the larg- 
est species sampled, illustrated the rapid early growth 
characteristic of many lutjanid species (Newman et al., 
1996, 2000a; Kritzer, 2004; Grandcourt et al., 2006). 
It is important to note that the same sampling gear 
was used in this project as that most commonly used 
by commercial and recreational fisheries on the GBR 
and therefore the biological characteristics described 
here should reflect those characteristics of individuals 
of these species harvested by the fishery. Importantly, 
the sampled age distributions revealed the age range 
of these populations susceptible to fishing gear. It is 
also likely that many fish were not sampled because 
sampling was constrained to depths shallower than 30 
m and to daylight hours, which are the most common 
