WEBVTT

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Orange roughy, I believe. Looks
like a big old one. Mike

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Vecchione is guessing that, you
know, this could be more than a

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hundred years old, this fish.
They aged one using otoliths at a

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139 years old. Otoliths are
calcium carbonate structures

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located just behind the brain
and their calcium carbonate is

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deposited in layers such that
when you look at them you can

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actually see these rings. I'm
not sure if they're annular or

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subanular but the bottom line
is, with some experience, you can

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get some accurate ages on these
fish and Mike Vecchione believes

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they start reproducing at 30
years of age and there was

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another study that showed that
in this population the average

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age of the breeding fish was 73
years. That's problematic with

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a species that you'd want as
a commercial fishery because if

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you fish the large ones and it
takes you know, 40 to 50 years

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for them to start reproducing
the healthy population again,

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you can very quickly wipe out
that population.