Reliable micro-measurement of strontium is the key to cracking the life-history code in the fish otolith

The fish otolith is a calcium carbonate (usually aragonite) crystal that crows continuously by accretion over the life of the fish and unlike bone is not continuously re-metabolised. Consequently, the otolith has long been regarded as a potential store of information about the life history of an individual fish, and this information is encoded in the deposition pattern of trace elements in the otolith. The code has been difficult to crack. However, recent developments have show that: (1) Sr is one of the few non-mobile trace elements in the otolith; and (2) the pattern of Sr deposition summarises the effects of environment changes that affect the growth rate of the otolith crystal. The remaining difficulties in cracking the chemical code in the otolith have hinged about making reliable micro-measurements of the stable Sr content at spatial resolutions of 10 µm or less; this interval represents about 4-6 days of otolith growth in most species of fish. This paper describes high beam resolution 2 µm linear measurements, and 6 µm square measurements over narrow windows of about 300µm square, and links these micro-measures to macro-measures of 2D maps of the entire surface of sections of otoliths up to 5 mm square at beam resolutions of 25 µm square. The otoliths used in this study are from the Jurel, or Peruvian Jack mackerel, Trachurus murphyi (Carangidae: Teleostei).