California Sea Grant College Program

Dr. Gregor Cailliet and colleagues at California State University sought to evaluate the accuracy of aging bocaccio by counting calcified layers in the fish’s bone-like ear structures, called otoliths. Otoliths are assumed to grow in annual bands.Their work suggests that otolith-based age estimates tend to underestimate ages of older fish, compared to age estimates based on radiometric analyses. In younger fish, whose otolith layers are more distinct and easy to count, both methods provide similar age estimates.