NOTE Tserpes and Tsimenides: Determination of age and growth of Xiphias gladtus 



601 



are appropriate for assessment studies of this stock. 

 The use of the standard von Bertalanffy growth model 

 is recommended for such studies because the general- 

 ized model overestimates the asymptotic length, an 

 essential parameter for population dynamics models. 



Acknowledgments 



We wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their 

 useful comments at an earlier version of this manuscript. 



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