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Fishery Bulletin 111(3) 
Table 1 
Life history characteristics of the 8 fish species analyzed in our study of soak time and fish accumulation as 
mechanisms that can cause trap saturation. Characteristics come from data sets of 2 sampling programs in the 
southeastern U.S. Atlantic: the Marine Resources Monitoring, Assessment, and Prediction Program (1990-2011) 
and the Southeast Fishery-independent Survey (2010-11). L M =maximum length; LmaturityGength at maturity; 
A m ax =max i mum age i n years; f=fish; i=invertebrates; PH=protogynous hermaprodite; SH=sequential hermaphro- 
dite; GO=gonochoristic. All lengths are total lengths in centimeters. 
Common name 
Scientific name 
hoc 
-^maturity 
■^max 
Diet 
Reproduction 
Bank Sea Bass 
Centropristis ocyurus 
33° 
14° 
9“ 
f,i“ 
PH“ 
Black Sea Bass 
Centropristis striata 
50 a 
16“ 
ii“ 
f,F 
PH“ 
Gray Triggerfish 
Batistes capriscus 
48 a 
19“ 
12“ 
if 
GO“ 
Red Porgy 
Pagrus pagrus 
51 a 
25“ 
20“ 
f,i e 
PH“ 
Sand Perch 
Diplectrum formosum 
24* 
19* 
8* 
f,i' 
SH“ 
Tomtate 
Haemulon aurolineatum 
35“ 
18“ 
17“ 
i d 
GO“ 
Vermilion Snapper 
Rhomboplites aurorubens 
51 a 
15s 
13“ 
f,i* 
GO“ 
Stenotomus spp. 
46' 
18' 
15> 
i' 
GO“ 
Sources: “ MARMAP (unpubl. data); b Sedberry (1988); c Manooch and Barans (1982); d Sedberry (1985 ); e Manooch 
(1977); f Kurz ( 1995 ); g Zhao et al. ( 1997); h Sedberry and Cuellar ( 1993); ' O’Brien et al. (1993);-) Finkelstein ( 1969); 
* Bubley and Pashuk (2010 ); 1 South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (http://www.safmc.net/). 
one modeling the presence-absence of each species and 
another modeling the positive catches only (Lo et al., 
1992; Pennington, 1996; Stefansson, 1996). The overall 
effects of a particular predictor variable on catch were 
then obtained by multiplying the effects from each sub- 
model (Maunder and Punt, 2004; Murray, 2004; Li et 
al., 2011). 
We examined the influence of 8 predictor variables 
on the catch of 8 reef fish species: soak time, fish ac- 
cumulation, year, depth, time of day, day of the year, 
water temperature, and latitude (Fig. 3). In this study, 
we were particularly interested in how soak time and 
fish accumulation influenced the catch of each species 
after accounting for variability in the other 6 predictor 
variables. To accomplish this goal, we first fitted the 
delta-GAM, and then we predicted catch for a range 
of values for soak time and fish accumulation, fixing 
all other predictor variables to their own mean, ex- 
cept the variable year, which was fixed at year 2000 
(i.e., the midpoint of the time series; results were in- 
variant to the year chosen). Soak time (soak) was the 
number of minutes a trap soaked between deployment 
and retrieval, and fish accumulation ( fshacc ) was the 
total number of individuals of all fish species caught 
Table 2 
Catch information, mean length, and frequency of occurrence (FO) for each of the 8 
most common species of reef fishes in the data sets of 2 sampling programs in the 
southeastern U.S. Atlantic: the Marine Resources Monitoring, Assessment, and Predic- 
tion Program (1990-2011) and the Southeast Fishery-independent Survey (2010-11). 
Mean proportion of catch is the mean proportion of catch in each trap that was com- 
posed of a single species. Fork length was measured for all species, except Black Sea 
Bass (Centropristis striata) and Bank Sea Bass (C. ocyurus ), which were measured for 
total length. SD=standard deviation of the mean. 
Species 
FO 
Mean (SD) catch 
per trap 
Mean (SD) 
proportion of catch 
Mean (SD) 
length (cm) 
Bank Sea Bass 
0.301 
1.4 (3.9) 
0.06 (0.17) 
22.5 (3.0) 
Black Sea Bass 
0.408 
10.2 (21.8) 
0.20 (0.30) 
23.6 (4.5) 
Gray Triggerfish 
0.263 
0.9 (3.3) 
0.06 (0.18) 
31.3 (7.0) 
Red Porgy 
0.364 
2.0 (4.4) 
0.13 (0.26) 
27.1 (4.6) 
Sand Perch 
0.184 
0.6 (1.8) 
0.03 (0.13) 
22.8 (1.6) 
Stenotomus spp. 
0.203 
6.5 (19.8) 
0.09 (0.20) 
15.6 (2.0) 
Tomtate 
0.403 
9.3 (21.9) 
0.18 (0.28) 
18.1 (1.9) 
Vermilion Snapper 
0.263 
3.0 (9.9) 
0.07 (0.17) 
23.7 (3.9) 
