Comparison of 0- and 2-group otolith elemental signatures to discriminate Solea solea nurseries in the bay of biscay

• Main Authors: Eric D. H. Durieux A, Maylis Labonne B, Marie-laure Bégout C, Hélène De Pontual D
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: North East Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.635.3980; http://hal-univ-corse.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/80/33/72/PDF/8thIFS_poster_Durieux_et_al_2011.pdf

The common sole Solea solea (L.) is a commercially important and widely distributed flatfish of the North-East Atlantic. For the Bay of Biscay stock, sole nurseries display differences in terms of quantity and quality. In fine the measure of the quality of a habitat for juveniles of a particular species is expressed by the contribution to the recruitment into the adult population. Understanding this connectivity between juvenile and adult habitats, i.e. evaluating the contribution of each nursery to a single adult stock appears essential in terms of stock management. However, this critical link is still missing for the Bay of Biscay sole stock. Determining if nurseries could be discriminated using otolith elemental composition analysis constitutes the first step in evaluating the relative contribution of these nurseries into the adult stock. The aim of this study was to compare otolith elemental signatures of sole juveniles from two different ages (0-group and 2-group) captured at the same time in the six main nurseries of Bay of Biscay along the French Atlantic coast. Material and methods Originally these G0 and G2 juveniles samples comes from two different studies: G0 were sampled in order to analyze adults otoliths (G3+) from the same cohort using LA-ICPMS, whereas G2 juveniles were sampled with the objective of analyzing G3 (first reproduction) otoliths of the same cohort using SB-ICP-MS. Here we took advantage of these two separate samples / analysis for a comparison exercise. Fish collection and otolith preparation 0-group and 2-group sole juveniles were collected in 6 nurseries (embayed and estuarine) as part of the IFREMER sole nursery survey in the Bay of Biscay (Table 1; Fig. 1) during September/October 2003