490 NOAA First U.S. Commissioner National Marine Fishery Bulletin established 1881 of Fisheries and founder Fisheries Service of Fishery Bulletin Abstract—Age, growth, and monthly reproductive characteristics were Demographic profile of an overexploited determined for the orange-spotted serranid, the orange-spotted grouper grouper (Epinephelus coioides) from northern Oman. This species is char- (Epinephelus coioides), from northern Oman acterized by a prevalence of females (1–11 years old), and males make up 1,2 6.5% of the total sample. Growth pa- Jennifer L. McIlwain rameters indicate a typical pattern Aisha Ambu-ali1 for groupers with a low growth co- Nasr Al Jardani1 efficient (K=0.135). The trajectory of 3 the von Bertalanffy growth function Andrew. R. Halford was almost linear with no evidence Hamed S. Al-Oufi4 of asymptotic growth. Estimates of David A. Feary (contact author)5 mortality revealed a low natural mortality of 0.14/year but a high Email address for contact author:
[email protected] fishing mortality of 0.59/year. More alarming was the high rate of exploi- 1 Department of Marine Science and Fisheries 4 tation (0.81/year), considered unsus- Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences tainable for a slow-growing grouper. P.O. Box 1700, Muscat 111 Sultan Qaboos University The population off southern Oman Sultanate of Oman P.O. Box 34, Al-Khod 123 is diandric protogynous, and sex 5 School of Life Sciences Sultanate of Oman change takes place between 449 and University of Nottingham 748 mm in total length (TL) or over 2 Department of Environment and Agriculture University Park a period of 4–8 years.