Development of an alternative ageing technique for blue shark (Prionace glauca ) using the vertebra

Abstract

Accurate determination of age is essential for the comprehensive assessment and management of exploited shark populations. Enhancement of growth bands is necessary to accurately and efficiently determine age. However, most traditional techniques do not describe an efficiency of a series of procedures and the detailed protocol for different-sized sharks. We describe a simple and highly successful technique for ageing vertebrae of blue shark (Prionace glauca) that we refer to as “burn method”, derived from the “break and burn method” and “shadowing method”—a simple procedure requiring an alkaline treatment to clean the vertebral centra and a burning treatment to enhance growth band visualization. We described optimal times for sharks of precaudal length of 50, 100, 150, and 200 cm as 44.9, 88.7, 134.0, 183.5 s of alkaline treatment, and 6.8, 8.9, 10.2, and 11.5 min of burning treatment; both longer and shorter exposure times resulted in higher failed sample frequencies. Using our burn method, it is possible to do ageing a sample from a wide angle, with the reader able to obtain information on growth bands from different perspectives. To critique different technique efficiencies, the index of average percent error (IAPE) and mean coefficient of variation (CV) are compared for independent readers using the burn method and other techniques (silver nitrate impregnation and the unstained shadowing methods). The precision of the burn method (IAPE, 4.1%; CV, 5.7%) was similar to that of silver nitrate impregnation (IAPE, 5.8%; CV, 8.2%) and unstained shadowing method (IAPE, 8.3%; CV, 11.8%). For younger specimens, the IAPE and CV of the burn method were lower than those of the other techniques, but, compared with other ageing methods, precision decreased for older sharks. We demonstrate that the burn method to be accurate for age determination of blue sharks, especially for specimens with less than 10 bands, but recommend simultaneous use of other methods, such as thin sectioning (the most common for structure-based ageing) and bomb carbon dating, to accurately determine the age of older individuals.