Validating the growth increment periodicity in the otoliths of three small progenetic gobies

Sílvia Pérez-Mayol,Itziar Álvarez,Inmmaculada Riera-Batle,Beatriz Morales-Nin,Amalia Grau

doi:10.3989/scimar.05162.015

Sílvia Pérez-Mayol, Itziar Álvarez + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3989/scimar.05162.015

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Journal: Scientia Marina	Publication Date: Sep 2, 2021
Citations: 1	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies

Abstract

We determined the efficacy of marking the otoliths of three small-sized progenetic gobies to validate their increment periodicity. These small gobies have high mortalities and rearing difficulties, making direct validation difficult. The otoliths were marked by immersing the fish in a bath of alizarin red S. The fishes were euthanatized and the number of increments in their otoliths laid down after the fluorescent mark were counted and compared with the number of elapsed days. The results validated the daily periodicity of Aphia minuta and Pseudaphya ferreri. The high mortality hindered the validation of Crystallogobius linearis.

Highlights

Three small-sized pelagic neritic gobies are the target species of a valuable small-scale fishery which has developed in the western and central Mediterranean
Summary: We determined the efficacy of marking the otoliths of three small-sized progenetic gobies to validate their increment periodicity
The results validated the daily periodicity of Aphia minuta and Pseudaphya ferreri

Summary

Introduction

Three small-sized pelagic neritic gobies are the target species of a valuable small-scale fishery which has developed in the western and central Mediterranean. The target species are transparent goby Aphia minuta (Risso, 1810) and Ferrer’s goby Pseudaphya ferreri (De Buen and Fage, 1908), and the bycatch species is crystal goby Crystallogobius linearis (von Düben, 1845). This traditional seasonal fishery uses a special purse-seine net over sand and gravel bottoms inside bays of Majorca (Balearic Islands) (Iglesias and Martorell 1992, Iglesias et al 1994). In the western Mediterranean, the commercial exploitation takes place during one fishing season each year, generally from December to March, in concomitance with coastal migration and shoaling of transparent goby in winter (Morales-Nin et al 2017)

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