Also, these less frequently landed snappers tend to be lumped into a “unclassified snappers” category in recreational and commercial landings reporting, thus making more definitive species-specific landings discrimination difficult. Mahogany snapper are known to form large social aggregations ( McEachran & Fechhelm, 2005), while dog snapper are typically solitary and wary except when in spawning aggregations ( Domeier, Koenig & Coleman, 1996).īoth species are of limited importance to the SEUS reef fish fishery, and the sparse estimated landings for both species reflect their low occurrence in the SEUS region ( Table 1). Both species are found on coral reefs and rocky hardbottom habitat at depths up to 100 m. The mahogany snapper, Lutjanus mahogoni (Cuvier, 1828), a smaller member of the Lutjanidae also caught infrequently by fishers, is distributed in the western Atlantic Ocean from the Carolinas to Venezuela and throughout the Caribbean Sea, including the Gulf of Mexico ( Carpenter, 2002).
Dog snapper have also been reported from the eastern Atlantic at Ascension Island ( Lubbock, 1980) and from the Mediterranean Sea ( Vacchi et al., 2010). The species is distributed in the western Atlantic Ocean from North Carolina to Brazil, into the Gulf of Mexico and throughout the Caribbean Sea, though they are rare north of Florida ( Carpenter, 2002). (SEUS), which includes North Carolina south through the Florida Keys. The dog snapper, Lutjanus jocu (Bloch & Schneider, 1801), is a moderate- to large- sized snapper (Lutjanidae) occurring infrequently in commercial and recreational reef fish catches in the southeastern U.S. The Von Bertalanffy growth equations were L t = 746(1–e (−0.20( t−0.32))) and L t = 334(1–e (0.31( t+1.19))) for dog snapper and mahogany snapper, respectively. Dog snapper ranged from 200–837 mm total length (TL) and ages 2–33, while mahogany snapper ranged from 270–416 mm TL and ages 2–18. Analysis of otolith edge-type revealed that annuli formed between May and July on both species. Otoliths of both species were easily interpretable and agreement between readers was acceptable. Fish were aged (56 dog snapper and 54 mahogany snapper) by counting opaque zones on sectioned sagittal otoliths. The species were opportunistically sampled from commercial and recreational fisheries in the southeastern U.S. primarily occurring off of southern Florida. Dog snapper ( Lutjanus jocu Bloch and Schneider 1801) and mahogany snapper ( Lutjanus mahogoni Cuvier 1828) are infrequently caught snappers in the southeastern U.S.
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