Bioaccumulation of environmental toxicants in aquatic ecosystems presents a significant ecological challenge including potential implications for fish reproduction and population dynamics. Through this meta‐analysis, we investigated how elevated mercury (Hg) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)—two prevalent and problematic contaminants—in large, and presumably old fish, affect toxicant concentrations in their eggs and subsequ...

The lack of data on the age, growth, and reproduction of the Atlantic Goliath Grouper Epinephelus itajara off the coasts of Florida (USA) makes it difficult to estimate the extent of their population recovery following the 1990 fishery closure, as well as the potential effects of the recent (2023) opening of a fishery for juveniles. Goliath Grouper from the Atlantic coast of Florida were non-lethally sampled for size (total le...

Atlantic goliath grouper (Epinephelus itajara), the largest reef fish in the Western Atlantic, exhibit high site fidelity to home reefs but also undertake annual migrations to distant spawning sites. Once relatively common throughout Florida and the Caribbean, the species; is now considered vulnerable (i.e., threatened with extinction) due to overfishing and loss of juvenile mangrove habitat. Goliath grouper in the southeaster...

Reliable data on Atlantic Goliath Grouper abundance are prerequisite to informed management decisions, particularly as the State of Florida reopened a limited harvest on the species in 2023 after a 32-year moratorium. Limited data exist for this purpose and fisheries data have been unavailable for over three decades due to a fishery closure that began in 1990. The purpose of this study was to compare absolute abundance estimat...

Nutritional quality of prey is a significant driver of predator foraging patterns. In mammals, nutritional needs are known to change across ontogeny and reproductive state; however, little is known about nutrition in marine mammals. For this study, we used observational data of diurnal foraging events, collected annually from 1992 to 2009, to investigate nutrition and prey use in Atlantic spotted dolphins ( Stenella frontalis...