Campana and Jones: Radiocarbon applied to age validation of Pogonias cromis 
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Figure 1 
(A) Transverse section of an adult black drum otolith presumed to be 27 years old. (B) A 
magnified view of the ventral side of the sulcus, a region in which the annuli (indicated by 
arrows) tend to be most clear. Bar = 2 mm. 
Results 
The presumed annuli in the black drum otolith sec- 
tions were clear and unambiguous (Fig. 1). Age bias 
plots (Campana et al., 1995) of the counts of the two 
independent age readers showed no bias and high 
precision (CV=1.6%) over an age range of 15-42 
years. Although the number of annuli was generally 
consistent on both the dorsal and ventral sides of 
the sulcus, the latter was usually the clearer of the 
