Life history characteristics of a suite of Scorpaeniformes in the south-eastern Indian Ocean

Abstract Members of the Scorpaeniformes are found throughout the world’s oceans and contribute to commercial, recreational and artisanal fisheries. Samples of five species of Scorpaeniformes from three genera ( Neosebastes , Scorpaena and Helicolenus) were collected from waters off south-western Australia to investigate the biological characteristics of each species, three of which have not been studied before. Neosebastes nigropunctatus , Neosebastes thetidis and Neosebastes pandus all attained ages > 30 years, while Scorpaena sumptuosa and Helicolenus percoides attained ages of > 20 and > 25 years, respectively. As all species are found in deep (> 50 m) waters, the lack of small (< 200 mm) and young (< 5 years) individuals for three of the species prohibited the description of growth early in life. However, employing a novel method of pooling length-at-age data for all five species to establish a single t 0 value enabled biologically realistic von Bertalanffy growth curves to be fitted. The degree to which the growth of females and males of each species differed varied, even amongst the three Neosebastes species. A meta-analysis of the biological data for studied Helicolenus , Scorpaena and Neosebastes species indicates that sex ratios become more skewed towards females with increasing disparity in the size of females compared to their males.