KISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 81. NO. 4 



Table 3.— True growth (cm) represented as the mean of annual 

 increments between next-to-last and last back-calculated lengths at 

 age for individual weakfish, Cynoscion regalis 



TABLE 4. — Annual increments in gutted weight (g) of weakfish, 

 Cynoscion regalis, by region and sex, based on the equation In gutted 

 wt= 4.705 + 2.984 In TL. 



Region II females in which maximum weight increase 

 occurred during the fifth year. Region HI had the 

 highest initial weight gain, but the rate of increase to 

 maximum size, at age 3, was reduced. Annual weight 

 increase was greater for females in Region I, although 

 the age of maximum gain was the same for both sexes. 

 In Region II, annual growth in weight was greater for 

 males, but maximum growth was attained at an 

 earlier age than for females. 



Growth was described by the von Bertalanffy 

 growth curve (Fig. 4),L ( =L„ = (1 - exp(-k (t - 1 )). 

 Parameters for the three regions are described in 

 Table 5. 



Von Bertalanffy growth curves were fit to mean 

 back-calculated lengths for each sex in Region I and 

 compared with the Hotelling T 2 test. Differences in 

 growth parameters k, L x , and w x were not significant 

 between sexes (P < 0.05). The parameter t was 

 significantly different between sexes (P < 0.05), but 

 the value off,, is not considered biologically revelant 

 (Galluci and Quinn 1979). Therefore, growth in 

 Region I could be described by a single set of growth 



In gutted wt = -4.705 + 2.984 In TL 

 r 2 = 0.983 n = 418 



A covariate analysis indicated that the equation ade- 

 quately described the length-weight relationship for 

 both sexes (P< 0.001). In Regions I and II, growth in 

 weight was lowest during the first year but increased 

 steadily reaching maximum gain at age 4, except 



Table 5.— Von Bertalanffy growth parameters for 

 weakfish, Cynoscion regalis, by region. 



9 10 11 12 13 14 



AGE 



FIGURE 4. — Von Bertalanffy growth curve fitted to mean back-calculated lengths at age of weakfish, 

 Cynoscion regalis, for Regions I- III (sexes combined). 



808 



