Otolith data collected from offshore Florida reef fish, 2015-07-06 to 2017-10-20

Growth increments from analysis of otoliths was compared to expected distributions to identify fast and slow-growing periods within the lives of individual fish. Specimens for this task originated from SEAMAP groundfish trawl surveys on the WFS, private fishing vessels, and Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) fishery-independent monitoring collections in nearshore areas along the west coast of Florida. Growth increments from weighed, sectioned, and polished otoliths (one otolith per individual) were measured using a software/digital-camera package. The growth increment dataset consists of a the SEAMAP or FWC sample identifier code (where applicable, to relate back to the collection source data), date of collection, latitude and longitude of collection (decimal degrees), a unique specimen ID code, species name, fish length (mm TL), increment number, and otolith increment size (mm).