Document Type
Article
Date of Original Version
2008
Abstract
To determine if population density in areas closed to fishing in Narragansett Bay is causing differences in the reproductive potential of the organisms, this study used two approaches to determine the reproductive condition of the animals. The first approach consisted in employing a gravimetric condition index (CI) to evaluate the general condition of quahogs from nine different sites, 3 sites open conditionally for fishing (conditional areas) and 6 sites closed to fishing. The second approach was a determination of gonadal index (GI) of a subset of the sample sites, by histological observation of gonadal tissue sections. Initial sampling included determination of CI only, and lasted from March 25 to Sep. 22, 2005. The subset of six of the sites was sampled the next year (2006), every three weeks from April 15 until Sep. 28 to determine CI and the gonadal index (GI). Results show that there is a significant difference between the CI of northern quahogs from conditional areas and quahogs from closed areas (P
Citation/Publisher Attribution
Marroquin-Mora, D.C., & Rice, M.A. (2008). Gonadal cycle of northern quahogs, Mercenaria mercenaria (Linne, 1758) from fished and non-fished subpopulations in Narragansett Bay. Journal of Shellfish Research, 27(4), 643-652. doi: 10.2983/0730-8000(2008)27[643:GCONQM]2.0.CO;2
Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.2983/0730-8000(2008)27[643:GCONQM]2.0.CO;2
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