Resource Ecology & Fisheries Management (REFM) Division

Age and Growth Program

Age Reading Demonstration (ARD) Web Site

The Age and Growth Program has unveiled a new interactive web site. This Age Reading Demonstration (ARD) web site allows site visitors to place marks on otolith images, which essentially assigns an age to the otolith. ARD then automatically marks the otolith image with marks from an experienced age reader and compares the visitor’s age with the experienced age reader’s age.

ARD presents otoliths from various species and of varying levels of ageing difficulty, which demonstrates that otoliths from different species often require completely different ageing strategies, and that otoliths from even an easy species can present difficult challenges.

The purpose of the ARD web site is not to “teach” age reading. An age reader typically must view thousands of otoliths through a binocular microscope in order to understand growth patterns before acquiring proficiency on a species. Instead, the purpose of the ARD web site is to give scientists and the general public a better appreciation of how difficult age reading really is. A future goal will be to allow the comparison of ageing criteria, between labs, on a real-time basis using similar software.

The ARD web site can be viewed at: http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/refm/age/interactive.htm.

By Dan Kimura

AFSC Quarterly
Research Reports Oct-Dec 2005