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Both techniques resolved δ O life-history signatures and showed patterns consistent with seasonal variation in temperatures and changes due to fish migration. When otoliths are large, micromilling/IRMS can provide adequate resolution for fish age validation. However, SIMS is the better option if greater sampling resolution is required, such as when otoliths are small or specimens are longer lived and have compact growth zones.

The ion microprobe produced a high-precision and high-resolution record of the relative environmental conditions experienced by a yellowfin sole that was consistent with population-level studies of ontogeny. Furthermore, this study represents the first time that crossdating has been used to ensure the dating accuracy of δ(18)O measurements in otoliths.

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Dendrochronology (tree‐ring analysis) techniques have been increasingly applied to generate biochronologies from the otolith growth‐increment widths of marine and freshwater fish species. These time series strongly relate to instrumental climate records and are presumed to reflect interannual variability in mean fish condition or size. However, the relationship of these otolith chronologies to fish somatic growth has not been well described. Here, this issue was addressed using yellowfin sole (Limanda aspera) in the eastern Bering Sea, for which a 43‐yr otolith chronology was developed from 47 otoliths and compared with body size for 6943 individuals collected in 1987, 1994, and 1999 through 2006. Among several metrics of size normalized for age and sex, average body mass index (defined as weight/length) had the strongest relationship to the otolith chronology, especially when the chronology was averaged over the 5 yr preceding fish capture date (R2 = 0.88; P < 0.001). Overall, sample‐wide anomalies in otolith growth reflected sample‐wide anomalies in body size. These findings suggest that otolith chronologies could be used as proxies of body size in data‐poor regions or to hind‐cast somatic growth patterns prior to the start of fisheries sampling programs.

We conducted a meta-analysis of growth for 46 species of the genus Sebastes in the eastern Pacific Ocean using a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate parameters, to investigate growth variability, and to elucidate meaningful biological covariates. Growth in terms of maximum attainable size (L∞) ranged from 12 to 80 cm, and instantaneous growth rates varied by over an order of magnitude (K; 0.03–0.34·year–1). Results from this method also confirm the theoretical, but often untested, view that growth parameters L∞ and K are negatively correlated among populations or species of fish; Bayesian credibility intervals for correlation ranged from –0.2 to –0.7, with the posterior median of –0.4. The Bayesian hierarchical growth model showed less variability in growth parameters and lower correlations among parameters than those from standard techniques used in population ecology, suggesting that the absolute value of the correlation between L∞ and K may be lower than the general perception in the ecological literature. Exploration of several covariates revealed that asymptotic size varied positively as a function of the size at 50% maturity. Finally, posterior probability distributions of the hyperparameters from this analysis provide plausible informative priors of growth for stock assessments of data-poor species.