204 



Fishery Bulletin 98(1) 



Table 3 



Von Bertalanffy parameters (± SEl desci-ibing the growth in mm total length of snowy grouper collected with snapper reels and 

 longlines and Kali poles (LL, KP) during two decades. Mean observed length at age data were used to generate parameter esti- 

 mates. Estimates from two earlier studies, generated using back-calculated lengths, are included for comparison. 



Maximum 

 observed 

 length L,, k ?„ 



1090 970(24) 0.109(0.001) -2.123(0.336) 



1110 1201(34) 0.103(0.008) -1.149(0.231) 



1034 948(28) 0.122(0.017) -0.668(0.681) 



1137 1117(13) 0.119(0.004) -1.409(0.121) 



1130 1255 0.074 -1.92 



1180 1320 0.087 -1.013 



trend was not as strong for snapper reel gear because 

 comparisons in 5 of 13 intervals exceeded the 0.05 

 level; only one comparison exceeded the adjusted sig- 

 nificance level (P<0.00394; Table 5). The age-length 

 keys for the two gear types were very similar in 

 1993-94 because comparisons in only 3 of 17 inter- 

 vals exceeded the 0.05 level, none of which exceeded 

 the adjusted significance level (P<0.00284; Table 5). 



Initial agreement between independent readers 

 was 24.2% for the 1853 otoliths examined by two 

 readers; however, there was a difference of 0-1 incre- 

 ments between readers for 61. 37^ of the otoliths. The 

 difference was >1 increment for 30.8'7f of the oto- 

 liths and 7.9'7f were rejected as uninterpretable. The 

 inclusion in the data sets of age data for otoliths that 

 were difficult to interpret did not affect the assess- 

 ment of population age distribution for snowy grou- 



