On the Collection and Use of Fish Scales for Fisheries Management: Pros, Cons, and Potential Solutions

Fisheries have enormous ecological and economic importance to the planet, yet threats of overfishing and climate change are altering the structure of the world’s fisheries. In order to assess and properly manage fisheries, information including fish age, size, growth rate, and origin must be gathered. Various fish body structures can yield this data but acquiring such information requires lethal sampling and arduous analysis techniques. Fish scales, however, do not present such limitations, as scales are ubiquitous, can be sampled nonlethally, and are inexpensive to analyze. Fish scales have known drawbacks which have stymied full adoption by fisheries management. Current issues with scales are discussed, specifically scale resorption and regeneration, and practical solutions to these issues are proposed. While scales have a long history of utility in fisheries management, their potential for wider application remains enormous. The synthesized information and suggested studies in this review offer a path forward for scale analysis to become more efficient and accurate, thereby eliminating lethal sampling methods while improving fisheries management.