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ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil Advance Access originally published online on February 2, 2009
ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil 2009 66(3):546-560; doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsp002
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© Canadian Government, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, 2009

Bomb dating and age determination of skates (family Rajidae) off the eastern coast of Canada

Romney P. McPhie and Steven E. Campana

Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Population Ecology Division, PO Box 1006, Dartmouth, NS, Canada B2Y 4A2

Correspondence to S. E. Campana: tel: +1 902 426 3233; fax: +1 902 426 1506; e-mail: campanas{at}mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca.

McPhie, R. P., and Campana, S. E. 2009. Bomb dating and age determination of skates (family Rajidae) off the eastern coast of Canada. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66: 546–560.

Recent declines in abundance of skates off the eastern coast of Canada have heightened the need for validated age and growth estimates in the region. In all, 502 winter (Leucoraja ocellata), little (Leucoraja erinacea), thorny (Amblyraja radiata), and smooth (Malacoraja senta) skate vertebral centra collected seasonally between 1999 and 2004 were sectioned using a mass processing method, then used to reconstruct growth in each species. Bomb radiocarbon ({Delta}14C) analysis was used to provide evidence of annual band-pair deposition in thorny skates. Estimates of L{infty} from traditional von Bertalanffy growth models (VBGM) ranged from 60.6 cm (little skate) to 89.7 cm (thorny skate), and K estimates from 0.07 (thorny skate) to 0.19 (little skate). A modified two-parameter VBGM (Lmax = 94.1 cm) fitted to winter skate length-at-age data yielded a value of K of 0.15. Maximum observed ages ranged from 12 (little skate) to 19 years in both winter and thorny skates. The year-specific incorporation of {Delta}14C milled from thorny and winter skate vertebral sections closely resembled shark-derived reference chronology values from the Northwest Atlantic. Pre-bomb {Delta}14C in a thorny skate collected in 1988 and aged at 23 years appeared to validate age interpretations and suggested that thorny skate reach an absolute age of at least 28 years, the oldest validated age reported for any species of batoid.

Keywords: age determination, bomb radiocarbon, eastern Scotian Shelf, mass processing technique, Rajidae, validation, vertebrae

Received 1 August 2008; accepted 22 December 2008; advance access publication 2 February 2009.


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