Otolith increment data from Stegastes partitus collected by SCUBA dives in the Upper Florida Keys, USA from 2003-2008 (FK Fish Recruitment project, FK Population Connectivity project) (NCEI Accession 0277445)

Acquisition Description:
Collections were made over many small boat SCUBA dives from 2003-2008; cruises and dives were not numbered.

The otoliths were extracted using standard dissecting techniques and placed in a drop of medium viscosity immersion oil on a microscope slide to clear for a minimum of 30 d. Based on ease of reading, only the lapilli were examined. The clearest lapillus was chosen from each individual and viewed under 400 magnification through a Leica DMLB microscope equipped with a polarized filter between the first stage and light source. The image was captured by a Dage MTI video camera and analyzed using Image Pro Plus 4.5 software (Media Cybernetics). Each otolith was read once blind (i.e., without sample information available) and saved as a digital file. Every 5th individual was measured a second time. The images of the remaining 1029 fish were examined to determine if there was any ambiguity in the placement of the increments and an additional 161 fish were aged a second time, resulting in a total of 418 fish aged twice. Otoliths were rejected where the difference between the first and second reads was > 5%, resulting in six exclusions. Otolith analysis was utilized to determine the following ELHTs: post-settlement age (number of concentric increments after the settlement mark), pelagic larval duration (PLD; number of concentric increments from the primordium to the settlement mark), larval and juvenile growth rates (widths between consecutive increments), and size-at-age (otolith radius-at-each age, including settlement).