The Red Drum Sciaenops ocellatus stock is heavily targeted in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) by recreational fishers and supports a small commercial fishery in Mississippi. Despite their popularity, little recent work has been done to describe their life history. In this work, we describe sex‐specific growth and reproductive dynamics of Red Drum collected from the northern GOM from September 2016 through October 2017. We evaluated seven candidate growth models and found that the three‐parameter von Bertalanffy growth function (VBGF) was the best candidate length‐at‐age model. No significant difference in growth between sexes was observed with the three‐parameter VBGF, despite the female‐specific curve having a larger mean asymptotic length than the male‐specific curve. All seven candidate growth models predicted similar mean length‐at‐age estimates, and four of them exhibited significant differences in sex‐specific mean length at age, with females reaching a larger length at age than males after age 5. There was no significant difference between the sex‐specific weight‐at‐length relationships. Red Drum are batch spawners that spawn in northern GOM coastal waters during August and September. We estimated 3.7 d between spawns and 10.5 spawning events per female in 2017. Nearly 20% of fish collected during the spawning season were sexually mature but reproductively inactive, indicating the possibility of skipped spawning. The age at 50% maturity was around 3 years (length at 50% maturity = 670 mm TL) in both sexes, but fish were not spawning capable until age 4.5 (703 mm TL) in males and age 5.8 (840 mm TL) in females. Furthermore, elevated gonadosomatic indices were not observed until around age 5–6. The updated life history information presented in this work helps to address current data limitations and provides critical information for future assessments of Red Drum stocks in the northern GOM.

中文翻译：

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墨西哥北部海湾红鼓的性别特异性生长和生殖动力学

红鼓鲷休闲渔民在墨西哥湾（GOM）大量捕捞该种群，并为密西西比州的小型商业渔业提供了支持。尽管他们很受欢迎，但最近很少有工作来描述他们的生活史。在这项工作中，我们描述了从2016年9月至2017年10月从北部GOM采集的红鼓的性别特异性生长和生殖动力学。我们评估了七个候选生长模型，发现三参数冯·贝塔兰菲增长函数（VBGF）是最佳候选年龄模型。尽管女性特异性曲线的平均渐近长度大于男性特异性曲线，但三参数VBGF并未观察到性别之间的显着差异。所有七个候选增长模型都预测了相似的平均年龄估计，其中有四个在年龄上表现出特定于性别的平均长度的显着差异，在五岁以后，女性的年龄比男性长得多。在特定性别之间的纵向体重关系没有显着差异。红色鼓是在8月和9月期间在GOM北部沿海水域产卵的批量产卵器。我们估计2017年产卵间隔为3.7 d，每只雌性产卵事件为10.5。在产卵季节收集的鱼中有近20％具有性成熟能力，但生殖不活跃，这表明有可能跳过产卵。两种性别在50％成熟时的年龄均为3岁左右（50％成熟时的长度= 670 mm TL），但直到雄性4.5岁（703 mm TL），而在5.8岁（840 mm TL）时才有产卵能力。女性。此外，直到5-6岁，才观察到性腺体指数升高。这项工作中提供的更新后的生活史信息有助于解决当前的数据局限性，并为将来评估北部GOM中的红鼓种群提供关键信息。