Life History
Cobia are pelagic spawners; that is, they release many tiny (1.2 mm) buoyant eggs into the water which become part of the plankton. The eggs float freely with the currents until hatching. The larvae are also planktonic, being more or less helpless during their first week until the eyes and mouths develop. Males mature at two years and females at three years. Both sexes lead moderately long lives of 15 years or more. Spawning takes place diurnally from April to September in large offshore congregations where females are capable of spawning up to 30 times during the season. Up to 20 individual spawns may take place in one season, with intervals of about one to two weeks. Cobia are frequently parasitized by nematodes, trematodes, cestodes, copepods and acanthocephalans.
Read more about this topic: Cobia
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or history:
“When I was in high school I thought a vocation was a particular calling. Here’s a voice: “Come, follow me.” My idea of a calling now is not: “Come.” It’s like what I’m doing right now, not what I’m going to be. Life is a calling.”
—Rebecca Sweeney (b. 1938)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)