Fish Biology

Understanding fish biology is essential to good fisheries management because it gives information about the productivity of a fish stock and informs the most sustainable strategy for managing that stock. Fisheries scientists collect a wide range of information on fish biology that is used in fisheries management. This information includes:

  • Stock structure – the division of local sub-populations of fish that don’t mix or breed with other stocks.
  • Age and growth – these can be estimated using ear bones or other hard parts, or through tagging experiments.
  • Reproduction – including at what age and length fish reach maturity, how many eggs they produce and how that changes with fish size and how, when and where the fish breed.
  • Recruitment – the entry of young fish into the fished component of the stock through growth or movement.  It can be important to understand what effects recruitment levels such as, the number of mature fish in the stock and environmental variables.
  • Mortality – total mortality is the rate that fish are killed both from natural causes (natural mortality from predation, old age, disease) and from fishing (fishing mortality).

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