162 
Fishery Bulletin 111(2) 
efforts to popularize Tilefish as a food fish resulted 
in record-high landings (4500 metric tons [t] ) in 1916 
(Freeman and Turner, 1977; Grimes and Turner, 1999). 
These efforts had only modest market success, and, 
except when prices were high, as in the 1920s and 
1950s, landings rarely exceeded 1000 t until the 1970s 
(Fig. 1). 
Events in the 1970s proved that persistent annual 
landings that exceeded 1000 t were unsustainable. Be- 
ginning in 1971, landings rose rapidly from <100 t to 
nearly 4000 t within a decade (Fig. 1). Landings re- 
mained high in the 1980s but were accompanied by ev- 
idence of overexploitation: decreased fish density, lower 
catch rates, smaller maximum size, and higher mortal- 
ity (Grimes et ah, 1980; Turner et ah, 1983; Grimes et 
al., 1988; Grimes and Turner, 1999). By the 1990s, only 
a subset of the fleet remained dedicated to fishing for 
Tilefish in the northeastern United States, and a 2001 
fishery management plan capped annual landings at 
905 t (Kitts et ah, 2007). 
The northern Tilefish stock is now considered largely 
rebuilt but uncertainty in the stock assessment ham- 
pers confidence in stock status and projections (NEF- 
SC 3 ). There is, for example, no fishery-independent 
index of abundance, and monitoring of biological data 
has been infrequent. Comparisons of assessment model 
results indicate that the presence of large Tilefish, and 
the biomass estimate in general, is dependent on peri- 
odically strong year classes, such as the 1970 and 1973 
year classes and most recently the 1993 and 1999 year 
classes (Turner, 1986; NEFSC 3 ). High levels of exploita- 
tion during the 1970s and 1980s also may have altered 
the demographics of the population. Vidal (2010) reports 
a maximum age of Tilefish of 25 years, much younger 
than the maximum age of 46 years reported by Turner 
(1986), indicating that the population has not recovered 
from age truncation that occurred during the period of 
high exploitation. 
This study updates several aspects of Tilefish life 
history from samples collected in cooperation with the 
commercial fishery. We began by revisiting the question 
of whether Tilefish are gonochoristie at the northern ex- 
tent of their range (Dooley, 1978; Grimes et al., 1988). 
It has been proposed but not proven that Tilefish are 
functional hermaphrodites (Sadovy de Mitcheson and 
Liu, 2008); therefore, we examined and clarified the 
gonochoristie sexual pattern of the northern stock with 
gonad histology. 
Ages were estimated with an otolith method, and age 
and size at maturity were calculated for both sexes to re- 
examine sexual dimorphism and temporal dynamics of 
3 NEFSC (Northeast Fisheries Science Center). 2009. As- 
sessment of golden tilefish, Lopholatilus chamaeleonticeps, in 
the Middle Atlantic-Southern New England region. In 48th 
northeast regional stock assessment workshop (48th SAW) 
assessment report, p. 11-180. Northeast Fish. Sci. Cent. 
Ref. Doc. 09-15 [Available from http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/ 
publications/crd/crd0915/pdfs/tilefish.pdf, accessed February 
2013.] 
Year 
Figure 1 
Tilefish (Lopholatilus chamaeleonticeps) landings from 
Virginia to New England for the period of 1915-2011 
in thousands of metric tons (t). Landings from 1915 to 
2008 are reported in NEFSC. 3 Landing data for 2009- 
11 are from a NOAA Fisheries database (http://www. 
st. nmfs.noaa.gov/st 1/commercial/land ings/annual_land- 
ings.html, accessed December 2012). 
maturity ogives. Male Tilefish grow faster and achieve a 
larger maximum size than females (Turner et al., 1983). 
Sexual dimorphism also is observed with respect to ma- 
turity: males develop larger predorsal adipose flaps than 
females at maturity, and males mature at older ages 
and larger sizes than do females (Grimes et al., 1988). 
Grimes et al. (1988) made 2 other important conclusions 
with respect to measurement of maturity: 1) males show 
evidence of spermiation, as detected by gonad histology, 
1-2 years earlier than macroscopic ripening of the go- 
nad, indicating that males delay spawning for a couple 
of years after this initial sign of maturity, and 2), from 
1978 to 1982, male age at spawning declined about 2-3 
years in association with high rates of exploitation and 
reduced population density. The effect was so extreme 
that, by 1982, males matured at a younger age than fe- 
males (Fig. 2). 
The topic of dramatic shifts in size and age at ma- 
turity was still controversial in the 1980s (Beacham, 
1987) , but such dynamic metrics have now been asso- 
ciated with overexploitation in Tilefish (Grimes et al., 
1988) and other fish stocks (Trippel, 1995; Wright et al., 
2011). To continue this line of inquiry, we compared our 
results with the benchmark values reported by Grimes 
et al. (1988). Although rapid responses by maturity 
traits to changes in mortality can be adaptive at the 
