Fishery Bulletin 120(1) 
for goosefish that occurred along the Atlantic coast of the 
United States in 2015. Recruitment indices in June 2015 
were nearly an order of magnitude higher than long-term 
averages (Richards, 2016), with a modal length encom- 
passing the size at settlement (Able et al., 2007). This 
clearly defined length mode remained evident for several 
years, providing a natural tag for identifying samples with 
known ages. 
We collected samples from the 2015 year class of goose- 
fish at ages of 1-3 years as the foundation for an age 
validation study focused on examining both illicia and 
vertebrae. Our goals were 1) to confirm year-class mem- 
bership of our samples, 2) to determine if ages estimated 
from illicia and vertebrae were accurate, 3) to evaluate 
the precision of age estimates from the use of these struc- 
tures, and 4) to determine the timing of annulus forma- 
tion on illicia. In addition, we estimated growth rates for 
fish 1-3 years old. 
72°W 
Materials and methods 
Length composition from surveys 
Goosefish were captured and measured during annual 
fishery-independent surveys conducted by the NEFSC 
along the Atlantic coast of the United States from Virginia 
to Georges Bank (Fig. 1). These surveys included the 
NEFSC bottom trawl] surveys (Stauffer, 2004), conducted 
in spring and autumn, and the NEFSC and Virginia Insti- 
tute of Marine Sciences scallop dredge survey (NEFSC, 
2010), conducted each June. 
The length distribution of goosefish in surveys between 
June 2015 (when the strong year class was first observed in 
catches) through September 2018 was examined. At each 
survey time step, length at age was estimated by fitting 
normal curves to the dominant length mode (stratified 
mean number per tow at length) presumed to represent the 
Number of samples 
© 1 
© 2-5 
© 5-10 
10-25 
>25 
Figure 1 
Map of sampling locations along the Atlantic coast of the United States from Virginia to Georges Bank 
where goosefish (Lophius americanus) were collected for this study from September 2015 through April 
2018. Samples were obtained from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) bottom trawl surveys, 
the NEFSC and Virginia Institute of Marine Science scallop dredge survey, the NEFSC Study Fleet, and the 
NEFSC Fisheries Monitoring Operations Branch. Circle color indicates the year of collection, and circle size 
indicates the number of samples. 
