Oldest fish on record caught off Albany
The record-breaking fish was a bottom-dwelling Bight redfish, like this one.
Commercial fisherman Tony Little caught WA's oldest fish on record in the deep waters of Two People's Canyon, off the coast of Albany.
The 84-year-old female Bight redfish (Centroberyx gerrardi), caught in November 2013, surpassed the state's previous record of 78 years, held jointly by the Western foxfish (Bodianus frenchii) and bass groper (Polyprion americanus).
The fish was caught as part of an $850,000 stock assessment project for the South Coast's scalefish fisheries, run by the Department of Fisheries (DOF) and Murdoch University's Centre for Fish and Fisheries Research (CFFR), funded by the State Natural Resource Management Office.
"In 2013 we aged about 18,000 fish at our Finfish Ageing Laboratory," DOF researcher Jeffrey Norris says.
"It puts us in an excellent position to make judgements about the health of WA marine fish stocks."
The laboratory receives filleted fish frames or skeletons from fish processors throughout the South Coast, using the otoliths—or ear bones—to determine the age of individual fish and thus the age distribution across fish populations.
The CFFR's Dr Peter Coulson is in charge of ageing the fish.
"The otolith... is removed and embedded in resin," he says.
"When the resin is set, we use a low-speed saw with a diamond-tip blade to cut a transverse section we can put under a microscope.
http://phys.org/news/2014-12-oldest-...ht-albany.html