Striped bass (Morone saxatilis) COSEWIC assessment and status report: chapter 3

Species Information

Name and classification

Scientific name: 
Morone saxatilis (Walbaum 1792)
Family: 
Moronidae

Synonyms:

Perca saxatilis
Walbaum 1792: 330 (type locality New York)
Labrax notatus
Richarson 1836: 8
Perca labrax
Perley 1852: 22
Labrax lineatus
Perley 1852: 181
Labrax lineatus
Fortin 1864: 60
Roccus lineatus
Adams 1873: 248
Roccus lineatus
Gill Adams 1873: 304
Roccus lineatus
(Bloch) Gill Cox 1896b: 70
Morone
Whitehead and Wheeler 1967: 23
Roccus saxatilis
(Walbaum) Scott and Crossman 1969: 22
French common names:
Bar rayé; Bar d'Amérique; Bar du Saint-Laurent
English common names:
Striped bass; Striper bass; Striper; Rockfish; Rockfish striper; Linesides

Description

Body elongate, laterally compressed. Head rectangular. Mouth large, lower jaw protruding. Fins: two dorsals, entirely separated, first dorsal spiny; caudal forked; anal of three spines; pelvics thoracic. Scales on cheeks and opercles.

Back dark olive-green to black, sides pale to silvery, belly white. Seven or eight dark horizontal stripes on the sides, following the scale rows. No stripes extend onto the head.

The onset of gonad maturation generally occurs at three-years-of-age in males, at a total length of over 30 cm. Females mature later, at about age four or five years, at a length of over 40 cm.

Figure 1. Striped bass, Morone saxatilis. Drawing from Scott and Crossman 1973.

Figure 1. Striped bass, Morone saxatilis. Drawing from Scott and Crossman 1973.

Designatable Units

Three designatable units are recognized. The Southern Gulf DU comprises the Miramichi population in New Brunswick. The St. Lawrence Estuary DU comprises the St. Lawrence Estuary population in Quebec. The Bay of Fundy DU comprises the Saint John River population in New Brunswick and the Annapolis River population and Shubenacadie population in Nova Scotia.

The Bay of Fundy and southern Gulf groups can be distinguished on the basis of meristic and morphometric characters (Melvin 1978) or, for the two extant populations (Miramichi and Shubenacadie), by analysis of their mitochondrial and nuclear DNA (Wirgin et al. 1993, 1995; Diaz et al. 1997; Robinson 2000). Exchanges between these groups appear to be limited.

With respect to the St. Lawrence Estuary population that has disappeared, the distribution of recaptures in a mark-release program between 1944 and 1962 suggests that it was isolated from the other Canadian populations (Beaulieu 1962; Robitaille 2001). Of the 3,009 individuals tagged, 310 were recaptured, all in an approximately 300 km section of the St. Lawrence Estuary from Lake Saint-Pierre to Kamouraska, the same section in which all commercial and recreational striped bass catches were taken.

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