Apr. 11

A commercial fishing boat hauled in what may have been one of the oldest creatures in Alaska - a giant rockfish estimated to be about a century old.

The 44-inch, 60-pound female shortraker rockfish was caught last month by the catcher-processor Kodiak Enterprise as it trawled for pollock 2,100 feet below the surface, south of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle measured, photographed and documented the fish. They removed an ear bone, the otolith, which contains growth rings similar to rings in the trunks of trees.
They estimate the rockfish was 90 to 115 years old.

That's toward the upper end of the known age limit for shortraker rockfish. Other estimates put the fish's maximum age at 157 years.

Scientists said the specimen is not the biggest on record. A 47-inch shortraker rockfish was recorded, according to the book "Fishes of Alaska

go

Cool. pity there is no photo though.

This thread puts an image in my mind of a fish wearing thick glasses and leaning on a zimmer frame. O.O

This is an impressive age for any animal to live to, but there are reliable reports of koi carp living 200 years. The upsetting thing is that they killed the fishy, so we'll never know how long it would have lived altogether.

You asked

Most koi in home ponds live for a good 20-50 years, if taken care of properly. But the oldest koi on record was Hanako. She was 226 years old when she died in 1977. The Story of Hanako.

And thanks for the photo, Nomad. That's one big fishie.

thx for the pic again that fish is huge and its amaseing that koi fish live for over 200 years