Age, Growth and Reproduction of Coryphaena hippurus (Linnaeus, 1758) in Maltese Waters, Central Mediterranean

Abstract

Age, growth and reproduction of the dolphinfish Coryphaena hippurus Linnaeus, 1758 collected from the Central Mediterranean in the period 2004-2010 by the traditional Maltese fish aggregating devices (FAD) and surface longline fisheries were studied. The a and b parameters of the length-weight relationship for fish 11-142 cm fork length (FL) (n = 4042) were determined as a = 0.018 and 0.022 with b = 2.85 and 2.79, for males and females respectively. The counting of annual increments from dorsal spines of >65 cm FL dolphinfish at X25 magnification (n = 47) permitting an age reading resolution in years, and the counting of daily increments from sagittal otoliths of <65 cm FL dolphinfish at X400 magnification (n = 583) permitting an age reading resolution in days, were estimated; the von Bertalanffy growth model applied to these fish gave the following parameters: L∞ = 107.8 cm FL and 120.2 cm FL, and K = 1.9 yr -1 and 1.56 yr -1, for males and females respectively. The maximum age observed was 2 years. Size at 50% maturity for fish 10-131 cm FL (n = 1376) was 58.9 cm FL and 62.5 cm FL for males and females, respectively. The sex ratio for the fish sampled from the FAD fishery (10.5-131 cm FL) was 1:1.54 (M:F) and for dolphinfish sampled from the surface longline fishery (91-130 cm FL) was 1:0.76 (M:F). Back-calculated hatch dates from age-0 dolphinfish (n = 518) suggested that spawning occurs from June to September with the highest levels in June. This study is the first to use dorsal spines to determine the age of adult dolphinfish.

Fishery, diet composition and reproductive biology of the dolphinfish Coryphaena hippurus (Linnaeus, 1758) off Karnataka, south-west coast of India

“…Similar length ranges of 45-127.5 cm (Rose and Hassler, 1974), 35.8-147.9 cm (Perez et al, 1992), 40-120 cm (Oxenford, 1985) and 35.8-132.3 cm (Perez and Sadovy, 1991) have been reported from North Carolina, Puerto Rico, Barbados and Puerto Rico respectively. However, Benjamin and The size frequency distribution recorded in our study is comparable with other studies conducted in North Pacific Ocean (Ditty et al, 1994), Eastern tropical Pacific (Zuniga et al, 2008), Central Mediterranean (Gatt et al, 2015) and Pacific Panama (Guzman et al, 2015).…”

“…Similar type of wide distributional abundance from within a few miles of the coast to offshore deeper waters has been very well documented in tropical and subtropical waters (FAO, 1994;Collette, 1999). Similarly, exploitation of the dolphinfish by different gears such as purse seines (Olson and Galvin-Magana, 2002) in Pacific Ocean, longlines (Gatt et al, 2015), drifting longlines, troll lines and surrounding nets (Castriota et al, 2007) in Mediterranean waters have been reported. The estimated annual catch of dolphinfish in Karnataka during 2013-2015 ranged between 136.3 t (2013) and 307.1 t (2014), with a mean of 209.3 t and accounted for 2.7% of the country's dolphinfish catch (7975 t).…”

“…These are highly migratory, large oceanic species having a wide distribution in tropical and subtropical waters of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans and known to occur within a few miles off the coast when wind blows steadily (Merten et al, 2014;Gatt et al, 2015). They generally occur along with large oceanic pelagic fishes and support important commercial fisheries in several regions (Losso and Zopata, 1999;Olson and Galven-Magana, 2002).…”

“…Studies on the fishery, diet composition, reproductive biology and stock status of dolphinfish are available from Mediterranean waters, Eastern Pacific Ocean, Tyrrhenian seas, Australian waters and northern coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Massuti et al, 1998;Oxenford, 1999;Olsan and Galvan Magana, 2002;Castroita et al, 2007;Newman, 2013;Pimenta et al, 2014;Gatt et al, 2015;Guzman et al, 2015). However, no comprehensive report is available on the fishery, diet composition and reproductive biology of dolphinfishes from Indian waters.…”

Étude de quelques paramètres de la reproduction de <i>Coryphaena hippurus</i> (<i>Linnaeus</i>, 1758) de la ZEE ivoirienne (Côte d’Ivoire)

“…Les études déjà réalisées sur cette espèce sont rares notamment celles relatives à la biologie de Coryphaena hippurus (Besbes et al, 2015) et les sujets traités sont peu diversifiés. Certaines font état de son comportement agrégatif généralement autour des objets flottants (Taquet, 2004), du régime alimentaire (Besbes et al, 2015), d'autres de quelques aspects de la croissance (Gatt et al, 2015 ;Taquet, 2004) et enfin de la biologie de la reproduction notamment les stades de maturité sexuelle (Besbes et al, 2000 ;Gatt et al, 2015).…”