2010 PSMFC Annual Report - Pacific States Marine Fisheries ...

Cooperative Ageing Project
The Newport Ageing Lab was established to production age marine groundfish structures and is a collaboration between
the NOAA Fisheries and PSMFC. The lab is located in Newport, Oregon at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC)
facilities. Age structures, collected from federal surveys and commercial catch, are the primary structures aged by this lab
and are used to directly support U.S West Coast stock assessments. Age specific estimates of biomass, mortality and population
trends are required to rigorously estimate the health of a fish stock. While this lab is primarily a production age reading
lab, there are opportunities on an annual basis to conduct age-related research and assist in NMFS directed at-sea surveys.
In 2010, Newport Ageing Lab personnel:
• Supported 7 groundfish stock assessments.
• Aged 23,251 otoliths from 9 species of U.S. West Coast groundfish, including the rockfish - canary, darkblotched, Pacific
Ocean perch and vermillion; the flatfish (sole)- Dover, English and petrale; and the roundfish - Pacific hake and sablefish.
This includes the following types of ageing; production, double reads and training.
• Archived age structures collected from NWFSC programs, such as the At-Sea Hake Observer Program (ASHOP) and the
groundfish trawl survey. This archive now encompasses 79 species and over 190,000 structures from 2003 to 2010. The
lab also has a substantial collection of age structures from 1983 to 2002 from Alaskan Fisheries Science Center directed
surveys (AFSC). This portion of our archive encompasses 13 species and over 52,000 structures.
program summaries
• From the states, the lab processed 930 otoliths from California, 13,344 otoliths from Oregon and 1,835 otoliths from
Washington.
• The lab began populating a database that tracks all data associated with a single specimen. The lab did not have a database
or this means of tracking until 2010.
• The lab was involved in a collaborative project to determine the life history of vermillion and sunset rockfish. We finished
ageing the vermillion and plan to begin ageing the sunset in early 2011. The age and growth data will be included in a larger
research project that will ultimately end up in a paper that will be submitted for publication in a peer reviewed journal.
• Lab personnel coordinated and participated in otolith exchanges with Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Department
of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Alaska Fisheries Science Center, NOAA Fisheries. Sablefish and Pacific hake were the
two species exchanged. These exchanges help ensure that each lab is utilizing the same ageing criteria. This becomes even
more critical when two or more labs contribute age data to a single stock assessment.
30 | Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, 2010 Annual Report