28 
Fishery Bulletin 109(1 ) 
Figure 6 
Transverse sections of red bream ( Beryx decadac- 
tylus) ovarian tissue. (A) Ovary of resting female 
containing primary growth oocytes. The top arrow 
indicates the thickened fibromuscular cord inside 
long lamellae and wide spaces between lamellae; 
the bottom arrow indicates the thick ovary wall 
(bar=500 pm). (B) Ovary of a ripe female contain- 
ing hydrated oocytes (indicated by arrows; bar=300 
pm), and (C) ovary of a ripe female depicting 12-24 
h old postovulatory follicles (indicated by arrows; 
bar=200 pm). 
dating supported maximum ages much higher than 
previously reported for this species. The A 14 C data 
also indicate that red bream in this study have been 
underaged by about 5 years. This is evidenced by 
the observed phase shift of the red bream chronol- 
ogy compared to the haddock reference and by the 
discrepancy between the two chronologies in initial 
and mean year of radiocarbon increase (Table 2). It is 
unlikely that this observed lag is due to depth-related 
differences in the 14 C signal for several reasons. First, 
red bream have a long pelagic juvenile stage (Mundy, 
1990) which indicates that red bream and haddock ex- 
perience similar environments in North Atlantic sur- 
face waters during otolith core formation. Second, the 
central opaque area of the first annulus in red bream 
otoliths is quite large and thus facilitated core extrac- 
tion and reduced the likelihood that inaccurate coring 
was responsible for the observed phase shift. All core 
weights were less than the weight that was obtained 
for an otolith from the Azores aged to be one year old, 
which further indicates that coring was accurate. The 
bias between red bream and haddock A 14 C chronologies 
is therefore likely due to aging error. Nevertheless, 
we were able to validate a minimum estimate of 49 
years for red bream maximum age through bomb ra- 
diocarbon dating. In spite of the underaging indicated 
by the A 14 C chronology shift, the bomb radiocarbon 
results support the annual nature of observed growth 
bands and, therefore, empirical age estimates of up 
to 69 years derived from the count of growth bands 
on sectioned otoliths are plausible. The positive lin- 
ear relationship with a high coefficient of variation 
between otolith weight and estimated fish age lends 
additional support to maximum age estimates of 60 + 
years. It seems likely that red bream longevity exceeds 
the maximum age that can be validated with bomb 
radiocarbon dating. A different validation method, 
such as lead-radium dating which is more suitable to 
extremely long-lived fishes would, therefore, be more 
appropriate for estimating red bream lifespan (An- 
drews et ah, 2009). 
The maximum estimated age for red bream reported 
here is more than three times greater than previous 
estimates from the eastern North Atlantic (Isidro, 
1996). This discrepancy could be due to underaging in 
previous studies, sampling bias, or it could be a reflec- 
tion of a true difference in population age structure 
on opposite sides of the North Atlantic. Aging error is 
likely a contributing factor. Previous investigations of 
red bream age and growth from the eastern North At- 
lantic are based on whole otolith analysis and have not 
been validated. Isidro (1996) mentioned the limitations 
of aging larger and older red bream through whole 
otolith analysis and stated that his reported maxi- 
mum age of 15 years should be considered a minimum 
estimate of longevity for this species because otoliths 
from larger specimens often had to be removed from 
the analysis due to reading difficulties. Isidro used 
marginal increment analysis to validate the periodic- 
ity of growth increment formation, but this method is 
