A recent UW student, Sydni Baumgart, performed her senior project on thin sectioning and imaging the oldest rockfish encountered in nearly 40 years of fish ageing collections at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. These rockfish include members of the Sebastidae family include shortraker rockfish, rougheye rockfish, blackspotted rockfish, northern rockfish, and Pacific ocean perch. Except for northern rockfish all of these species live in excess of 100 years, with shortrakers nearing 150 years. This gallery shows whole otoliths, thin sections, and close up images of otolith regions that age readers would use to count for generating age estimates.
