Abstract

Otoliths are widely used in stomach content analysis in fisheries biology, other than age determination or ichthyo-archeological studies, because they have species specific morphological features. It is possible determine size and species of the prey fishes in the digestive system of the piscivorous aquatic predators. In this study, the relationships were calculated between sagittal otolith measurements (otolith length (OL), height (OH) and weight (OW)) and fish size (length (TL), weight (W)) in painted comber Serranus scriba (Linnaeus, 1758) specimens (N=763, 68–241 mm in TL and 3.66–228.72 g). Fish specimens captured via bottom trawl vessels from off the Güllük Bay (Southern Aegean Sea) between January and December 2013. Regression equations were calculated as follows: TL= 20.11*OL+40.28, TL= 44.07*OH+50.24, TL= 969.1*OW0.410, W= 1.212*OL2.194, W= 11.16*OH1.850, W= 5913*OW–12.22, OH= 0.218*OL+1.213, OW= 0.00045*OL1.843, OW= 0.002*OH1.672. Calculated regressions were displayed a high coefficient of determinations ranging between 0.822 - 0.892. Otolith length (R2= 0.890) is the best indicator of the prediction of the fish length by examining the regression coefficients for S. scriba.