Griffiths. Life history and stock separation of silver kob, Argyrosomus inodorus 
55 
Southeastern Cape 
Trawl 
Total catch = 376. 
El 994 
□ 1993 
01992 
□ 1991 
□ 1990 
□ 1989 
01988 
□ 1987 
■ 1986 
0 N D 
01994 
□ 1993 
01992 
□ 1991 
□ 1990 
□ 1989 
01988 
01987 
■ 1986 
Month 
Figure 6 
Cumulative monthly landings of Argyrosomus inodorus made by the inshore trawl fish- 
ery in the southeastern Cape and the southern Cape, expressed as percentages of the 
respective annual totals, 1986-94. 
scopically. Multiple-batch spawning has been de- 
scribed for several other species of sciaenids, e.g. 
Sciaenops ocellatus (Fitzhugh et al., 1988), Seriphus 
politus (DeMartini and Fountain, 1981), Cheilotrema 
saturnum (Goldberg, 1981), Genyonemus lineatus 
(Love et al., 1984), Cynoscion nebulosis (Brown- 
Peterson et al., 1988), Pogonias cromis (Fitzhugh et 
al., 1993; Nieland and Wilson, 1993), and Micro- 
pogonias undulatus (Barbieri et al., 1994). 
Sex ratios 
From the total numbers of silver kob sampled, it was 
evident that there were significantly more females 
(1.6x) in the southeastern Cape, more males (1.2x) 
in the southern Cape, and more females (2. lx) in the 
southwestern Cape (Table 3). Except for the small- 
est size class sampled in the southeastern Cape 
(where males predominated), all other size classes 
sampled in the southeastern Cape and in the south- 
western Cape contained significantly more females. 
Smale (1985) also recorded consistently higher pro- 
portions of female “A. hololepidotus ” per 100-mm 
length class for fish sampled in the southeastern 
Cape (1978-81). Although he included both A. 
inodorus and A. japonicus in his study, the latter 
species recruits to the line fishery only at about 1,000 
mm TL (Griffiths, in press, b), therefore his speci- 
